Sib 


THE  ROBERT  E.  COWAN  COLLECTION 

I'RKSKNTKn    TO    THK 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 

BY 

C.  P..  HUNTINGTON 


Class 


BACKWARD  GLIMPSES 


GIVEN  TO  THE  WOULD 


BY   JOHN   BUNYAN, 


THBOUGH  THE  INSPIRATION  OF 


SARAH    A.    RAMSDELL 


SAN  FRANCISCO : 
Woman's  Publishing  Company,  Printers,  511  Sacramento  Street 

1873. 


Entered,  according  to  Act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  1873,  by 

SARAH  A.   KAMSDELL, 
In  the  Office  of  the  Librarian  ojf  Congress,  at  Washington. 


ff  UNIVERSITY 


Curiosity,  after  all,  is  the  hook  that  fishes  out 
more  knowledge  than  any  other  trait  in  the  human 
character;  and  so  my  appeal  will  first  touch  the 
never-satisfied  hunger  of  the  buzzard  bird  who  sits 
a  croaker  around  our  well-spring  of  thought. 

In  the  many  attempts  I  have  made  to  reach  the 
tidal  shores  of  Time,  I  have  met  the  rebutting  spirit 
of  incredulity;  and  I  have  said,  each  and  every  time, 
my  hour  of  presentation  is  yet  in  the  future;  wait 
until  the  bride  and  the  bridegroom  say  come.  And 
I  have  waited  for  the  hour  when  no  man  need  be 
deceived  or  ashamed  to  face  the  truth  of  Spirit  com- 
munion. And  now,  when  the  soul  craves  more 
light,  shall  I  withhold  my  feeble  torch?  For  the 
light  is  to  descend  in  its  various  and  many  ways  to 
choke  out  the  spirit  of  darkness,  and  if  my  one  ray 
of  individuality,  given  from  the  platform  of  Spirit- 
ual growth,  saves  one  soul  from  the  cherishment  of 
despair,  then  have  I  done  the  will  of  Him  who  sent 


PBEFACE. 

me,  as  did  the  Christ  of  old  follow  back  on  the  line 
of  natural  condition  inherent  from  the  will  force  of 
Deity.  And  thus  I  return  to  earth,  not  through  the 
atoning  merit  of  Christ's  blood,  but  through  and  by 
the  same  force  of  natural  law;  and  were  Christ  to- 
day to  fulfill  the  mission  of  his  second  coming,  the 
world  would  look  for  the  natural  causes  that  pro- 
pelled His  journey. 

And  thus  would  I  have  the  world  look  on  my  re- 
turn; not  as  any  miracle,  but  simple  compliance 
with  the  requisite  conditions,  which  is  love  for  my 
fellow  men,  the  will  power  to  control  another  per- 
son's organized  brain-principles,  and  a  recognized 
right  to  do  so  through  the  harmonial  blending  of  the 
natural  affinities  of  disposition  and  character  to  act 
from  the  standard  of  duty.  And  so  I  come,  dressed 
as  of  old,  for  service.  But  thanks  be  to  the  Great 
and  Eternal  God  that  no  prison  doors  can  close 
around  me,  or  prison  bars  shut  out  the  light  of  this 
glowing  day. 

GIVEN  IN  LOVE,    TRUTH  AND   CHAKETY, 

BY  JOHN  BUNYAN, 

THROUGH  THE  TRANCE   CONDITION  OF   SARAH  A.  RAMS- 
DELL. 


CHAPTEK  I. 

jITH  flowers  filling  my  crown  I  come 
back  to  earth.  Years  have  intervened 
and  stubborn  facts 'have  chased  along 
my  pathway  since  the  grim  monster  Death 
propelled  my  onward  march.  I  took  on  my 
form  of  life  in  the  Province  of  Bedford,  on 
the  English  coast.  A  provincial  town  or 
township  is  necessarily  fluted  and  stuccoed 
with  the  sap  that  has  run  a  leakage  from  the 
interior  fund  of  social  knowledge.  Hence  the 
beverage  I  drank  from  youth's  open  doorway 
of  grasping  sensational  life  was  filled  with  the 
slime  run  from  the  circles  or  pools  of  upper- 
tendom,  or  the  interior  court-rooms  of  pol- 
ished fastidiousness.  Youth  wore  no  rosy 
morn  for  me.  Hell  broke  loose  over  all  the 
continent  of  youthful  labor.  My  storm-king 


6  BACKWARD  GLIMPSES. 

raged  throughout  my  whole  being.  Every 
part  of  mind-function  was  traversed  and  laid 
bare,  for  the  Angel  of  Destruction  to  riot  in 
full,  and  leave  the  citadel  a  broken,  shattered 
wreck,  with  but  a  dim  star  left  a  pointer  from 
the  other  side  of  angel  guidance  that  touched 
my  heart  or  mind  ability  to  see  that  I  was 
becoming  a  cumberer  of  the  ground — a  curse, 
walking  in  God's  sunlight — a  fact  outwrought 
from  the  mind  force  of  Deity.  I  shudder 
now  in  recalling  my  youthful  depravity — what 
might  have  been,  had  that  lone  star  or  germ 
of  goodness  dropped  from  my  horizon  of  life. 
John  Bunyan's  name  would  never  have 
floated  to  the  world  of  public  favor,  and  John 
Bunyan  to-day  would  be  filling  the  lower 
saloons  of  spirit  growth.  Oh!  God,  I  thank 
Thee  for  that  one  flower  that  has  shed  its  fra- 
grance through  every  grade  of  my  onward 
march. 

I  do  not  intend,  in  this  work  which  I  am 
about  giving  to  the  world,  to  pick  up  past 
events,  or  linger  around  bygone  scenes  any 
farther  than  to  show  my  individuality.  I 
have  felt  for  some  time  that  the  world  needed 
my  experience  portrayed  from  the  realms  of 
Spirituality,  and  in  giving  it  to  the  world  I 
am  stepping  through  all  the  barriers  of  con- 


BACKWARD  GLIMPSES.  7 

ventionality.  I  am  laying  low  tlie  postal 
doors  of  oppression — am  swinging  open  the 
broad  gate  whose  hinges  have  become  rusted 
from  disuse,  and  whose  pillars  need  no  longer 
stand  sentinels  of  guard  around  the  super- 
structure of  Spirit  communion.  I  bless  God 
that  the  boon  of  ignorance  is  failing  in  ser- 
vice ;  that  the  tweedledum  of  to-day  outstrips 
the  tweedledum  of  bygone  centuries,  that  laid 
a  fundamental  theory  for  each  successive 
generation  to  step  to  and  make  secure  that 
unction  of  facts  to  bless  the  world  with  its 
new  found  light  set  in  the  candlestick  of  lib- 
erty. God  designed,  in  his  plan  of  super- 
structure, that  one  body  of  purposed  power 
should  waylay  and  assist  those  of  weaker  con- 
stituent parts,  and  God  never  failed  in  pur- 
pose or  one  iota  of  judgment,  so  to  speak, 
dropped  fco  the  Devil's  field  of  use.  God 
manages  at  the  helm  of  governmental  duty, 
and  picks  a  star  of  promise  from  every  out- 
gush  of  scientific  knowledge  that  comes  to 
the  world.  God  deals  by  justice  of  His 
truths,  outcentered,  outharmonized  and  out- 
hung  on  every  typical  branch  of  His  person- 
ality. God  ranges  through  cause  and  effect 
with  the  utmost  skill.  He  never  runs  counter 
to  a  law  laid  down  in  His  book  or  field  of 


BACKWARD  GLIMPSES. 

truthful  principles  that  do  the  labor  of  the 
world.  God  harmonizes  love  and  labor. 
Labor  ever  waits  for  love  to  touch  some  por- 
tion of  its  merited  worth  before  it  commences 
a  nutricious  movement.  Love  is  God's  cen- 
tripetal, centrifugal,  and  centralization  force, 
that  winds  the  armor  of  brightness  around 
all  Hie  law  of  cause  and  effect.  God  man- 
ages by  force  of  circumstances,  as  man,  the 
outwrought  holocaust  of  liberalization,  is 
managed,  controlled  and  governed  by  God's 
internal  law  of  circumstantial  by-play.  Man 
has  no  free  will  outside  of  God's  free  will, 
for  God  is  the  agent  or  agencies  that  starts 
his  wheels  of  power,  whether  it  be  in  the 
animalculse  of  natural  functions  of  growth,  or 
in  the  high-toned  spirituality  of  cosmopoli- 
tan manhood. 

I  have  never  laid  off  the  armor  that  cause 
and  effect  produced  on  me.  Every  license 
given  to  cause  had  its  widening  influence  on 
effect  or  effects  of  charactered  symbolic  life. 
We  live  as  much  under  that  law  in  Spirit  life 
as  in  the  life  that  gave  us  startling  proof  of 
existence.  Manhood  is  the  counterpart  of 
childhood — the  limb  grown  from  the  twig — 
the  arm  of  power  that  sapped  up  the  baby 
for  a  ride  in  the  car  of  growth.  Babyhood 


BACKWARD  GLIMPSES.  9 

is  our  tinsel  experience — the  slippered  foot 
that  draws  on  its  rubber  of  protection  as  the 
inclement  season  of  youth  advances,  and  with 
each  advance  step  on  the  border  shore  of 
Time,  the  rubber  casement  expands,  and 
youth  steps  into  the  grown  shoes  of  man- 
hood, a  battledoor  and  shuttlecock  for  the 
public  waves  of  good  breeding — false  breed- 
ing or  no  breeding  at  all — only  what  has 
leaked  through  the  crack  of  public  animosity. 
When  the  world  disfavors  a  criminal,  on  that 
criminal's  brow  is  stamped  the  brand  of  Cain, 
which  is  left  to  burn  and  corrode,  sear, 
scorch,  and  damn  a  soul  that  is  already  bot- 
tled up  for  destruction,  and  only  awaiting  the 
light  hid  under  a  bushel  to  change  the  cur- 
rent of  hellish  design.  The  lever  that  has 
ever  been  the  probe  of  use,  that  has  reared 
its  scaffold  of  prizes  that  each  generation  has 
picked  from,  is  the  great  light  of  love  hid 
under  the  bushel  of  discontent,  and  when  the 
cover  is  removed  and  love  shows  every  linea- 
ment of  her  smiling  face,  then  will  the  crimi- 
nal courts  of  justice  and  the  criminal  courts 
of  the  body  police  be  on  the  line  of  with- 
drawal, and  God's  stamp-mark,  with  its  fleecy 
brightness,  will  be  the  whipping-post  and 
scourging-rod  used  on  the  course  of  Time.  I 


10  BACKWAED  GLIMPSES. 

would  preface   my  work  with  this  scrap  of 
truth,  and  then  proceed  with 

JOUBNEY  No.  1. 

The  letters  of  the  alphabet  are  ranged  ac- 
cording to  man's  reason.  But  who  arranged 
the  A  B  C  of  man's  checkered  footstool  of 
life  ?  Who  digs  away  the  fossil  remains  from 
every  doorway  of  advancement  and  lets  out 
the  eager  bird  of  curiosity,  whose  wings  are 
becoming  too  broad  for  its  cage  ?  Y/hat  but 
the  mind  force  of  intellectuality  could  grapple 
the  whole  basis  of  man's  outstart,  and  see 
from  the  beginning  the  stagings  built  along 
the  road  of  progress,  and  the  step  higher, 
step  higher,  of  the  internal  revenue  fund  of 
man's  created  genius  of  movement.  What  or 
who  but  God  built  man,  and  who  or  what 
but  man  built  God?  What  but  mind  can 
fashion  ?  What  delve  and  dig,  plan,  contrive, 
and  execute?  What  but  this  unseen  force — 
this  God  in  man,  and  man  in  God.  What 
Kepler  gave  the  world  was  a  part  of  Deity, 
and  what  I  shall  give  the  world  to-day  is  but 
another  portion,  hung  on  another  branch  of 
the  God  tree  of  life.  My  journeyings  com- 
menced with  God,  will  proceed  with  God, 
and,  if  they  ever  end,  end  with  God.  There- 


BACKWAED   GLIMPSES.  11 

fore,  if  I  ever  cease  to  be,  shall  cease  on 
the  up-hill  grade  of  motion,  with  God  for 
a  leveler,  with  no  pin  of  devil  claim  stuck 
in  my  wardrobe  of  growth.  Life's  commence- 
ment with  me  was  almost  bereft  of  sunshine. 
I  waded  with  intuitive  reason — God's  help  in 
my  hour  of  need — on  to  a  platform  where 
principle  made  a  footprint,  and  reason  sus- 
tained the  embryotic  monitor  of  guard. 
Earth  holds  me  with  its  weight  of  circumstan- 
tial evidence  against  my  boyhood's  outleap  of 
sin ;  and  farther  on,  Earth  holds  the  changing 
boy.  Another  step,  and  experienced  man- 
hood flung  its  mantle  around  me,  and  I  step- 
ped to  the  goal  of  public  animosity  or  the 
shooting  star  of  liberty,  which  I  then  tried 
to  capture  and  hold  fast  by  the  string  of  jus- 
tice— the  cord  that  the  world  handles  lightly 
and  in  accordance  with  the  public  favor  of 
opinion.  Twelve  years  of  my  earth  life  was 
the  Sodom  and  Gomorrah  of  my  existence; 
the  hell  of  my  boyish  keeping  broke  loose 
in  my  prisoned  cell  for  thought  to  linger 
around  and  harvest  what  it  could  of  worth. 
The  dreary  cell  of  a  prison  might  well  be  called 
the  anxious  seat  where  one's  past  experiences 
come  up  for  show,  to  profit  and  strengthen 
our  future  course,  and  if  we  have  the  down- 


12  BACKWARD   GLIMPSES. 

ward  tendency  there  is  no  heart  but  God's  to 
save  us.  And  some  hearts  are  never  touched 
from  the  great  fountain  of  God's  love  only 
through  the  channel  of  human  kindness  and 
effort.  What  can  be  done  when  that  source  of 
watering  the  prison  cell  with  love  is  with- 
drawn— pent  up  and  laid  away  to  rust  and 
corrupt  in  a  world  of  selfish  monopoly.  Many 
sink  to  the  very  verge  of  that  hell  they  are 
placed  there  to  escape.  Some  there  are  who 
can  weave  a  web  of  salvation,  and  mount  the 
ladder  of  growth,  confined  by  ten  thousand 
prison  walls;  because  some  hearts  make  league 
with  God  through  the  silent,  unseen  monitor 
of  conscience,  and  grapple  for  truths  that 
come  borne  by  the  winged  messenger  of  love 
that  sits  outside  our  conscience-room  and 
lifts  the  wail  of  despair  into  the  court-rooms 
of  angelic  Godhood;  and  there,  away  from 
earth,  and  yet  aware  of  all  her  selfish  princi- 
ple of  deal,  the  work  of  a  prisoned  soul's  re- 
generation goes  on.  And  it  was  thus  with 
me;  shut  away  from  man,  that  should  have 
been  my  prop  to  sustain,  strengthen  and  en- 
courage, I  sought  my  God  with  new  hope, 
faith,  and  indomitable  will;  for  if  I  ever 
wanted  God  it  was  then  and  there;  and  as  I 
was  placed  there  for  trying  to  swell  His  prin- 


BACKWARD  GLIMPSES.  13 

ciples  of  liberty,  I  felt  in  some  way  He  was 
owing  me  duty;  and  there,  in  my  Berkshire 
prison-house,  I  made  my  entire  peace  with 
God,  and  ever  since  have  been  a  traveler, 
guided  by  his  unerring  hand  or  hands  of  wis- 
dom, that  opens  every  gateway  of  knowledge, 
whereby  I  may  near  the  Throne  Eternal,  which 
is  the  height  of  human  capacity  over  God's 
outlay  of  scientific  or  scientific  principles  laid 
in  the  underground  car  of  natural  attributes 
— the  field  where  man  ever  digs,  whether  in 
the  world  of  matter  or  the  world  of  Spirit — for 
every  grade  of  life  is  in  its  natural  proximity 
to  Nature.  We  can  no  more  step  away  from 
Nature  than  we  can  step  away  from  God,  be- 
cause both  surround  the  orbit  of  natural  de- 
sign, and  both  work  through  the  harmonized 
condition  of  love  out  to  the  broad  field  of  God 
nature,  God  man,  and  God  throughout  the 
height,  breadth,  and  depth  of  every  world 
motioned  in  space. 

I  would  like  to  show  in  this  work,  if  I  can 
take  the  medium  so  far,  the  meaning  of  the 
term  love.  I  want  to  wind  it  around  every 
branch  and  loophole  of  Gods  defensive 
world  of  care.  I  want  to  show  its  deep  wells 
of  thought,  its  holy  sanctification  ground, 
where  never  yet  has  been  a  soul  stranded,  and 


14  BACKWARD  GLIMPSES. 

where  never  can  come  the  footprint  of  error. 
I  throw  it  out  as  a  prediction,  that  the  world, 
or  its  secret  avenues  of  sorrow,  and  perhaps 
guile,  will  one  day  throw  to  John  Bunyan  a 
blessing  for  an  exposition  of  that  one  little 
word,  love,  so  full  of  meaning  and  so  highly 
seasoned  with  the  bread  of  life. 


CHAPTER  II. 

JN  entrance  way  to  any  place  must  be  free 
from  rubbish,  to  make  smooth  the  pas- 
sage  io  fit  us  with  a  passport  of  ease 
and  self- reliability.  When  our  footsteps  are 
clogged  we  cannot  maintain  a  natural  position 
in  walking ;  and  so  when  the  avenues  leading 
to  thought  become  obstructed  with  the  fleecy 
frothings  of  the  world's  nonsensical  nothing- 
ness, the  stream  so  filled  cannot  float  the 
more  substantial  timbers  of  common  sense, 
and,  therefore,  common  sense  runs  the 
blockade,  and  sits  grim  and  serene,  await- 
ing the  removal  of  the  fungus  growth  or 
bandage  of  show  that  clogs  up  and  some- 
what embellishes  the  stream  of  free  thought. 
When  Washington  Irving  joined  hands 
over  the  world's  hollow  mockery  of  life,  he 
took  the  staff  that  pointed  heavenward,  and 
the  mind  of  America's  brightest  poet  ever 
found  food  ripe  for  his  picking.  And  now, 
when  Washington  Irving  greets  me  in  my 
home  of  Spiritual  truth,  the  restraining  hand 


16  BACKWARD  GLIMPSES. 

of  Time  can  pick  no  flaws  on  his  line  of 
poetic  march,  for  the  hallelujahs  of  pure  mo- 
tive ever  resounded  over  his  earth  life.  I 
might  cite  many  a  man  that  has  lived  purely, 
truly,  and  in  direct  harmony  with  the  light  of 
conscience,  and  yet  have  called  down  the  an- 
athemas of  the  world  on  their  honest-topped 
heads  of  worth.  Socrates,  with  all  his  learn- 
ing and  canticles  of  power,  froze  up  the  one 
stream  that  should  have  watered  the  earth 
and  left  a  more  brilliant  fruitage  in  his  gar- 
den seat  of  honor.  Socrates  loved  the  glitter 
of  show — loved  the  ruby  coloring  of  wine — 
loved  its  sparkling  effect  on  his  income  of 
knowledge  that  he  was  pruning  for  the  world; 
and  had  Socrates  left  the  stream  clear,  wherein 
floated  his  prize  gems,  for  humanity's  pick- 
ing, the  bugle-horn  that  sounded  his  praise 
would  have  dropped  more  notes  to  his  bar  of 
musical  grandeur.  The  world  imbibes  by 
force  of  instinct,  and  hazards  by  force  of  will. 
If  I  start  to  grapple  for  mind  education,  it  is 
instinct  that  first  shows  the  need.  Then  will 
puts  in  the  hook  of  claim,  to  show  that  power 
has  a  meaning,  and  gloves  are  not  needed  to 
handle  the  enemy  at  bay.  Knowledge  is  a 
touchstone  that  needs  the  repeated  raps  of 
the  chisel  or  peck- hammer  to  keep  it  under 


OF  THB 


BACKWARD   GLIMPSES.  17 

the  control  of  physical  force  ;  for  there  is  no 
branch  of  knowledge  but  what  must  be 
brought  in  direct  contact  with  physical  sinew 
and  bone  service.  What  is  worth  having  is 
worth  grasping  for;  and  the  hand  of  fate  never 
moves  our  car  of  growth  or  succors  our  main- 
tenance until  we  step  to  the  platform  of  give 
wThile  we  receive.  The  bane  to  growth  at  the 
present  day  will  be  physical  stupidity  ;  or, 
more  anglicized,  means  laziness,  which  will 
yet  curse  the  American  people.  Americans, 
at  the  present  day,  if  indeed  there  are  any 
true  to  the  core,  without  the  admixture  of 
foreign  driblets  of  show,  that  take  from  in- 
stead of  adding  to  the  birthright  fund  of 
America's  freedom.  America  can  never  again 
be  free,  in  the  true  sense  of  freedom,  for  the 
staple  article  in  her  markets  of  outstanding 
deal,  is  pride  —  pride  of  wealth,  of  outward 
adornment  ,  of  simply  mustering  dress  parade 
for  every  day  in  the  week  ;  and  as  Sunday  is 
reckoned  somewhat  out  of  the  week  of  daily 
labor  it  would  seem  that  theatrical  rehears- 
iugs  were  the  order  of  street  exercises,  and 
churches  the  drop  curtains  for  hiding  the 
shams  of  life.- 

The  Zorastic  period  wears  a  type  of  medi- 
umship  or  inspirational  pathology  that  lit 


18  BACKWARD   GLIMPSES. 

that  age  with  its  star  crown  of  prizes,  that  has 
graced  the  brow  of  every  generation  since, 
and  the  tombs  of  tbe  Zorasters  never  buried 
an  inkling  of  glory  around  the  field  of  Zo- 
rastoric  labor.  The  lamented  Theodore  Par- 
ker has  said  to  me,  in  our  social  chat  hours, 
that  he  never  in  his  earth  pilgrimage  blew 
a  horn  of  outgrowth  but  what  some  spaniel 
scented  mischief,  and  straightway  sent  out  a 
snarl  that  vibrated  all  through  the  puppy 
kingdom,  or  the  fledgeling  nest  of  man's  rea- 
soning faculties,  which  are  puppyish  until 
the  old  dog  of  experience  has  barked  in  every 
tree  where  hung  game  for  picking.  Theodore 
Parker  was  a  martyr  on  earth.  He  had  a 
soul  hung  too  high  for  the  world's  acknowl- 
edgement, and  when  his  messenger  of  release 
came,  the  world  saw  the  Christ  within  him — 
saw  the  halo  of  glory  surrounding  his  brow 
— and  would  have  picked  him  away  from  the 
world  he  was  journeying  to,  and  have  killed 
the  fatted  calf  of  animosity,  and  hung  out  a 
star  of  love  to  guide  him  back  to  the  world 
that  needed  him.  But  thanks  be  to  the  God 
of  all  life,  truth  and  love,  that  Theodore  Par- 
ker still  maintains  his  high  gifted  soul  of  pur- 
pose ;  maintains  his  position  of  help  to  the 
world,  and  maintains  the  sympathetic  chord 


BACKWARD  GLIMPSES.  19 

whereby  he  will  reach  all  hearts  by  the  deep 
tones  of  resounding  truth  that  will  be  sent 
forth  from  his  Spirit  home.  I  bless  God 
that  Theodore  Parker  lived ;  and  I  bless  God 
that  every  high  and  holy-martyred  soul  found 
footing  on  earth  that  this  day  star  of  glory 
could  shine  for  the  enlightenment  of  others. 
Theodore  Parker  has  lit  a  torch  that  never 
can  go  out,  because  it  will  be  fed  from  God's 
eternal  wells  of  truth,  and  the  flame  kept 
bright  by  the  gentle  fannings  of  progress 
and  the  gentle  wooings  of  Spirit  over  mat- 
ter. 


CHAPTER  III. 

IEELZEBUB  was  accounted  the  father 
of  mischief,  but  no  mother  has  yet  been 
found,  if  the  Eve  partakement  of  the 
fruit  of  knowledge  ingrafted  on  every  branch 
of  scientific  principle  or  scientific  outlay  of 
strength  that  God  propelled  from  His  library 
of  ease  and  history,  would  assure  us  that  by 
some  means  the  snake  first  imbibed  the  secret 
of  this  knowledge  that  God  was  trying  to 
keep  from  Adam  a.nd  Eve.  Now,  in  order  to 
make  the  Bible  appear  true  and  in  sound 
keeping  with  God's  lofty  judgment  and  fore- 
thought of  execution,  the  snake  must  have 
typical  significance.  He  must  be  dressed 
with  some  power  from  the  outside  world — 
must  present  cunning  and  artifice  to  attract 
Eve,  and  make  himself  heard  in  his  sly  re- 
treat. It  would  seem,  therefore,  that  God 
justifies  the  means  of  evil  to  work  out  a  good 
in  its  principles  of  action.  I  might  as  well 
start  on  the  basis  of  no  evil,  for  that  is  my 
theory  at  the  present  time,  and  everything  in 


BACKWAED  GLIMPSES.  21 

Nature,  and  every  sentence  of  pointed  worth 
in  God's  book  of  saving  grace  that  the  world 
still  clings  to  and  never  can  fathom,  because  it 
had  its  origin  in  the  brain  work  of  ignorant 
manhood,  and,  therefore,  shut  away  from  the 
enlightenment  of  the  present  century  of  de- 
velopment, which  is  flourishing  finely  from 
the  tree  of  promise,  instead  of  the  backgam- 
mon board  of  error,  that  has  well-nigh  served 
its  purposes,  and  is  running  to  the  font  of 
freedom  for  support,  as  stringency  will  no 
longer  sustain  its  aim  to  be  kept  before  the 
world  of  public  favor.  Nature  and  Biblical 
history  proclaim  there  is  no  lasting  evil- 
no  burnt  offering  of  Jehova's  wrath  swells 
the  base  to  any  tenor  cord  in  the  vibrative 
box  of  universal  love  as  the  ultimate  and  end 
of  God's  harmonical  love-tune,  which  is  as 
lasting  and  pure,  as  the  Father  is  lasting  and 
true  to  sustain.  God  grant  that  the  evil  of 
to-day  may  be  over-balanced  by  the  good  of 
to-morrow,  and  that  the  captivating  smile  of 
the  arch-enemy  may  wear  no  truth  of  purpose 
around  the  human  heart;  and  God  grant  that 
the  evil  of  to-day  may  not  leave  our  souls 
hungered  and  athirst  around  the  stringent 
tree  of  worth  placed  in  a  world  that  God 
once  acknowledged  to  be  good,  and  as  we 


22  BACKWARD  GLIMPSES, 

have  no  record  that  God  allowed  the  evil  one 
to  contaminate  beyond  His  power  to  redeem 
or  reclaim,  we  may  as  well  suppose  that  the 
world  to-day  is  as  God  designed  it  in  its 
good  and  evil  report.  I  find,  as  I  again  tra- 
verse the  earth,  or  bring  myself  to  notice  its 
parts  and  points  of  growth,  that  the  next  del- 
uge that  will  be  needed  and  of  service  to 
God's  universal  whole,  will  be  the  surging 
waters  of  Spirit  truth,  which  sprung  a  leak- 
age as  far  back  as  we  have  any  knowledge  of 
time,  and  was  dammed  up  by  the  earthly 
clogs  of  superstition  and  the  fanatical  cry  of 
earthly  Heavendom.  Time  has  started  every 
foe  to  Spirit  communion,  and  is  still  on  the 
rampage  for  the  lost  House  of  Israel,  or  a 
Heaven  that  will  sprout  nothing  but  aristo- 
cratic bipeds,  who  are  floating  in  the  world 
without  purpose  or  power — sticks  to  be 
picked  for  the  Devil's  burning.  I  have  never 
found  in  my  Spirit  journey  ings  a  Heaven  es- 
pecially designed  for  the  wealthy  aristocracy 
of  earth.  They  commence  their  growth  with 
the  poorer  children  on  Time's  shore,  and  will 
enter  the  Spirit  house  of  God's  love  with  the 
same  poor  travelers  that  often  appealed  to  their 
pockets  of  mercy  when  wandering  on  the  bread 
and  butter  shores  of  life.  God  furnishes  a  plat- 


BACKWARD   GLIMPSES.  23 

form  for  our  straying  feet,  and  we  step  there- 
on barefooted  and  weak,  but  sustained  and 
made  strong  by  the  earth  props  of  love  and 
care,  the  father,  mother,  brother  and  sister 
relationships  of  time,  God's  viceroyalty  of 
binding  grace  in  the  world.  Life  is  one  vast 
playground,  and  the  slippered  feet  move  with 
unclad  ones  of  sorrow,  and  when  the  play  is 
over  on  the  thorny  side,  the  new  Jerusalem 
will  offer  no  sly  wink  to  the  feet  that  have  al- 
ways been  encased  with  care.  Each  and  ev- 
ery soul,  whether  grown  to  manhood  or  still 
lingering  by  the  shiny  shore  of  childhood, 
will,  when  the  cross-over  of  life  commences, 
pick  up  their  own  staff  of  travel  and  find 
their  own  level  of  credit. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

jHE  world  of  poesy  is  all  about  us,  and 
the  hard  stern  fact  of  life's  reality  that 
weaves  its  intricate  web  and  hangs  it 
on  the  battlements  of  our  widening  experi- 
ences of  duties  and  of  pleasures,  is  all  there 
is  of  growth.  The  mind  functions  of  being 
never  expand  under  the  blighting  influence 
of  slothful  habit.  Neither  can  the  physical 
functions  of  earth  life  grow  harmonial  and 
true  to  the  natural  instincts  of  progress  under 
the  binding  cord  of  non-usefulness  and  non- 
ability  in  actual  outlay  of  physical  strength. 
Man  was  made  for  use — for  the  watering 
hose — to  expand  and  cultivate  the  garden 
fields  of  Time,  and  to  prepare  a  fruitage 
mete  for  the  kingdom  of  Heaven.  The  ideal 
life  of  sprouting  manhood  is  his  basis  ground 
for  the  actualities  of  real  life.  Homer,  in 
his  Iliad,  lived  through  the  truths  he  therein 
uttered.  No  person  can  build  on  the  ideal 
plane  but  what  the  structure  must  be  in  com- 
ponent parts  a  life-lease  of  the  individuality 


BACKWABD  GLIMPSES.  25 

that  surrounded  and  made  palpable  the  out- 
wrought  figure  of  individual  design.  There 
is  no  harnes  that  fits  as  well  as  our  own; 
although  other  people's  may  be  gilded  with 
the  silver  and  gold  tips,  still  they  would  not 
serve  the  wear  and  tear  of  our  every-day  ex- 
periences. We  want  the  solid  masonry  of 
right  principles,  right  motives,  and  the  right 
judgment  key  to  unlock  the  fountain  of  ap- 
preciation in  the  outside  world.  If  we  edu- 
cate our  conscience  aright,  it  never  will  or 
can  play  truant,  because  it  is  founded  on  the 
God  rock  of  Truth,  and  will  stand  every  emer- 
gency of  testship.  Claudius,  the  Komish 
lawgiver,  made  truth  glow  with  Divine 
favor.  He  built,  and  maintained  his  build- 
ing on  the  even  square.  This  system  was  to 
fit  all  things  by  the  rubic  process,  and  hence 
Claudius  was  to  the  world  a  prize  gem — a 
lofty  exemplifier — "Do  unto  others  as  ye 
would  that  others  should  do  unto  you. "  The 
world  of  materiality  will  yet  have  to  step  to 
that  basis  of  deal,  for  the  lightning  rod  of 
common  sense  must  some  time  protect  the 
embryo  principle  of  right,  of  justice,  shown 
in  the  milk  of  human  kindness  that  goes  out 
to  succor  and  maintain  the  great  brotherhood 
of  man.  When  Rome  built  her  fires  of  wrath 


26  BACKWRAD   GLIMPSES. 

and  destruction,  they  were  built  on  the  plat- 
form of  physical  hardihood  of  endurance. 
The  Romans  would  acknowledge  no  strength 
superior  to  man's;  no  God  superior  to  their 
templed  one  of  pomp  and  worldly  honor. 
Rome  flooded  herself;  for  there  never  can 
be  growth  on  any  continent  of  the  world's  re- 
nown unless  the  spiral  point  for  accumulation 
reaches  to  the  world  of  God's  Spiritual  gran- 
deur of  purposed  power.  God  or  Nature 
would  have  us  acknowledge  our  maintenance 
— would  have  us  throw  out  a  spirit  of  thanks- 
giving and  praise,  that  the  great  life  foun- 
tain has  been  mindful  of  our  daily  wants;  has 
cherished  us  with  a  loving  arm  of  protection  ; 
that^no  straying  wolf  has  entered  our  fold  of 
secured  prizeship  unless  we,  from  careless 
habit,  have  left  a  bar  down  or  failed  to  secure 
the  door  leading  to  God's  help-house  invested 
in  man.  What  we  want  to-day  God  has  never 
yet  failed  to  give ;  for  if  His  stream  to  us 
seem  stringent,  we  know  the  withholdment 
means  purification — a  greater  good  through 
the  lesser  means — a  Spiritual  development 
through  the  laceration  of  physical  by-plays 
of  movement.  We  never  clothe  ourselves 
for  the  world's  eye  but  what  we  wish  for 
something  better — some  gew-gaw  of  show 


BACKWAED   GLIMPSES.  27 

we  think  would  be  highly  attractive  and  fix 
our  mark  of  worth  in  the  outside  world.  But 
when  we  come  to  the  Spiritual  clothing  or 
adornment,  we  are  not  so  lavish  with  our  de- 
tails of  show.  We  sometimes  even  shrink 
from  letting  the  world  know  that  we  have  se- 
cured a  gem  set  in  the  crown  of  Spiritual 
light.  We  are  moved  according  to  the  wealth 
in  our  mental  and  moral  deposit.  We  can 
only  give  as  we  have  received,  whether  it  be 
from  the  external  or  internal  prize-house  of 
worth.  The  law  of  equity  will  ever  be  classi- 
cally illustrated  and  brought  to  account  if 
entailed  upon  or  in  any  way  misled  or  abused. 
What  I  propose  in  this  work  which  I  am 
striving  to  give  the  world  is,  to  illustrate  and 
make  clear  my  journey  ings  and  pilgrimage 
as  I  have  wended  my  way  from  earth.  It 
will  simply  be  a  recounting  of  my  travels, 
my  restings,  and  my  gleanings,  and  I  hope 
the  world  will  see  that  Christian's  pack  or 
burden  that  weighed  him  down  on  earth  was 
but  the  typified  expression  of  sin,  and  how 
each  successive  movement  on  the  up-hill 
principles  that  govern  and  stake  our  onward 
life  is  more  or  less  ruled  by  our  past  beverages 
drank  from  the  cesspools  of  earth.  Time  was 
when  man  was  slow  to  perceive  the  debt  he 


28  BACKWARD  GLIMPSES. 

owed  to  God  or  conscience ;  but  the  swift  and 
fleeting  feet  of  progress  Lave  brought  man  to 
see  that  apology  to  our  interior  manhood  is 
ofttimes  due  from  the  winding  course  of  out- 
side life. 
/ 

God  grant  that  the  earthly  journey  may  pick  new  stars 

of  light, 

As  Time's  wafting  breezes  make  onward  her  flight, 
And  the  glory  that's  found  in  the  tombs  of  the  past, 
Be  the  star  of  reflection  that  cannot  hold  fast. 
For  the  booming  gun  points  and  is  sure  to  discharge 
Its  contents  of  fire  to  the  enemy  at  large, 
Who  has  wriggled  and  shuffled  and  fought  to  secure 
A  stronghold  for  creediste  that  would  ever  endure. 
But  Time's  changing  finger  points  out  to  the  light, 
Where  the  glory  of  error  is  found  in  its  flight; 
Then  let  God  be  the  watchword — let  Satan  hang  low; 
And  we're  freed  from  His  pincers  wherever  we  go. 


JOURNEY  No.  2. 

The  time  has  been  when  John  Bunyan's 
attempt  to  visit  earth  would  have  settled 
around  the  minds  of  earth  as  a  hallucination 
on  the  part  of  a  writer,  or  one  giving  the 
facts  of  my  present  or  past  locomotive  pow- 
er to  be  a  tangible  embodiment,  bearing  the 
stamp  mark  of  individuality  possessed  by  no 


BACKWARD   GLIMPSES.  29 

one  but  John  Bunyan;  and  the  reason  I  have 
not  before  made  my  appearance  and  related 
my  experiences  in  the  world  of  ether  light 
is,  because  the  spirit  of  unbelief  has  ever 
stared  me  in  the  face,  and  to  use  a  homely, 
but  old  and  trite  expression,  it  was  like  casting 
pearls  before  swine  to  force  myself  back  be- 
fore the  world  was  ready  to  receive  me ;  and  my 
second  coming  shall  be  like  a  thief  in  the 
night,  and  I  will  draw  all  hearts  around  me 
by  the  truth  marks  of  circumstantial  evi- 
dence that  I  can  lay  before  the  public  mind. 
The  lady  I  have  chosen  to  do  my  work  is  ob- 
scure to  the  great  world-heart  of  popularity, 
and  in  no  way  anxious  to  become  a  shining 
light  on  the  road  of  public  favor.  She  is 
simply  acting  from  the  standpoint  of  duty; 
but  I  will  try  and  gather  the  roses  for  her 
Spiritual  crown  from  a  bush  that  has  discard- 
ed the  thorny  emblems  of  life,  and  in  the 
days  that  she  shall  be  shut  away  from  the 
world,  but  holding  entire  communion  with 
me,  I  will  lay  before  her  those  fields  of  living 
green  that  are  watered  and  kept  in  pristine 
beauty  by  the  key-notes  of  harmony  sound- 
ing from  the  river  streams  of  Spiritual  life. 
God  grant  that  there  may  be  many  workers 
from  a  sense  of  duty — more  that  are  willing 


30  BACKWARD   GLIMPSES. 

to  take  a  plunge  in  the  pools  of  public  ani- 
mosity for  the  fish  or  shark  that  wears  the 
fins  that  only  protrude  when  the  helpless  fig- 
ure or  figures  of  Truth  come  slowly  twinkling 
by;  and  God  grant  that  the  spicy  shades  of 
life  may  throw  wide  and  free  the  aroma  that 
gladdens  the  secret  springs  of  a  happy  life- 
hood. 

"We  do  not  give  out  our  happying  forces  as 
much  as  we  should.  We  twine  ourselves  too 
much  within  the  range  of  our  own  encom- 
passment,  and  live  on  the  basis  of  selfish  mo- 
nopoly. The  time  has  gone  by  when  the  face- 
marks  of  error  that  have  arisen  by  the  fire- 
side of  our  own  selfishness  can  be  wiped  out 
without  leaving  the  indellible  stain  that  lasts 
through  the  wear  and  tear  of  earth's  fabric 
of  experience,  and  nestles  itself,  by  force  of 
habit,  into  our  Spiritual  garment  or  vesture 
of  change.  When  selfishness  takes  posses- 
sion of  a  person,  there  is  but  one  tune  for 
them  to  be  played  on  the  great  fiddle  of  use, 
and  that  is  the  quick-time  footstep  to  every 
whim  of  selfish  desire.  Another's  wants 
might  claim  their  attention  and  stick  a  pin  of 
trust  about  their  hedgerow  of  willingness, 
which  ever  hangs  an  idle  figure  of  show,  to 
be  made  use  of  in  casting  off  our  froth  of 


BACKWARD   GLIMPSES.  31 

wonder  at  another  person's  non-ability  to  take 
care  of  number  one,  which,  to  a  selfish  per- 
son's mind,  seems  to.be  the  acme  of  God's 
whole — the  one  warbling  note  cast  but  from 
the  keystone  of  God's  one  love.  The  selfish- 
ness that  rides  along  the  crested  waves  of 
Time  is  strange  and  wonderful  to  a  soul  after 
having  taken  on  its  wardrobe  of  immortality, 
for  we  then,  to  a  great  extent,  lose  sight  of 
the  physical  basis  of  deal,  and  are  brought  in 
direct  contact  with  the  higher  elements  that 
surround  our  orbit  of  growth.  We  learn 
more  of  the  fullness  of  content  by  coming 
out  to  God's  broad  and  sunny  platform  of 
united  handiwork.  That  whatever  I  have  to 
give,  take  ye  therefrom,  is  the  paean  of  God's 
sounding  message  to  the  world.  And  we  in 
spirit  life,  to  accumulate  the  starry  gems  that 
fall  from  the  Lord's  supper  house  or  table- 
land, must  glean  for  the  well  being  of  all — 
must  open  our  fields  to  the  Euths  and  Naomis 
that  are  found  in  all  the  social  walks  of  life, 
and  who  are  strugglers  to  maintain  the  prin- 
ciples of  right  and  well  doing  in  the  world  of 
materiality,  as  well  as  in  the  world  of  Spirit- 
uality. God  has  raised  up  this  world  land 
of  Judea  for  a  prize  emblem  or  figure-head  to 
mount  the  rostrum  of  planetary  evolution  of 


3  BACKWARD   GLIMPSES. 

fame,  and  its  board  must  and  will  be  swept 
clear  of  the  binding  spirit  that  drives  a  hitch- 
ing post  for  another  where  they  would  not  be 
willing  to  stop  themselves. 

The  inequality  of  position,  and  the  body 
show  of  worldly  maintenance  is,  after  all, 
but  the  instruments  on  which  the  interior 
principles  or  attributes  play  their  tunes  of 
merit  or  demerit,  and  to  a  person  where 
much  is  given,  much  will  be  required ;  as  in 
Hamlet,  the  Ghost  will  ever  be  ready  to  make 
its  appearance,  and  claim  for  itself  the 
shadow  of  something  real.  How  strangely 
we  are  formed!  How  intricately  fashioned 
for  the  great  world  of  use!  If  a  thread 
breaks  in  our  machinery-house  of  external 
proportion,  we  feel  the  sensitive  jar  through- 
out the  whole  fabric  of  motion  ;  and  so  when 
our  interior  screws  are  loose  we  have  a  rick- 
ety sensation  of  being  all  wrong,  and  some- 
body else  must  be  at  fault ;  for  one  little  mis- 
take on  our  part,  that  meant  everything  so 
clever  and  nice,  would  not,  of  course,  make 
so  great  a  break.  The  screw  that  needs  at- 
tending to  must  be  in  some  other  body's 
work-house  of  deal.  And  thus  we  try  to  rea- 
son ourselves  away  from  any  attempt  at  re- 
construction, and  the  breaks,  of  course,  accu- 


BACKWARD  GLIMPSES.  33 

mulate,  and  before  we  are  fully  aware  of  the 
fact,  we  are  seemingly  past  repair.  But,  as 
Theodore  Parker,  or  some  other  illustrious 
mind  has  said,  God  holds  aloft  the  signal 
gun  to  awaken  us  from  dark  despair  and  push 
us  away  from  our  Sedan  chair  of  ease,  and 
unfold  within  us  the  right  purposes  for  ac- 
tive measures  of  copartnerships  in  this  world 
of  typehood  for  eternity.  The  shores  of  the 
better  land  ever  mingle  in  our  schedule  of 
defense  that  we  hold  out  to  pacify  conscience 
and  make  clear  the  breastwork  presented  to 
the  world.  We,  from  the  standpoint  of  cos- 
mopolite citizenship,  wear  our  clothing  with 
reference  to  the  sun  and  tide.  If  we  see  the 
flumes  open  leading  to  the  smokestack  of 
earth,  we  reach  for  the  garment  best  suiting 
the  occasion,  for  we  well  know  that  the  scent- 
hound  of  distrust  is  ever  ready  to  tear  and 
lacerate  the  throat  of  Truth.  Therefore  the 
road  leading  from  the  heart-shaped  fountain 
of  Paradise  was  first  traversed,  as  earth  is 
well  aware,  by  the  non-sensitive  ones  that 
could  beat  a  retreat  when  the  door  of  incredu- 
lity was  shut  in  the  face  of  a  Spirit  messen- 
ger. Earth  is  asking  to-day  why  the  olden 
leaders  on  Time's  footstool  do  not  return  with 
the  first  threads  of  their  second  advent  to 


34  BACKWARD   GLIMPSES. 

pierce  the  needle  eye  of  earth,  that  her  per- 
ceptive faculties  may  be  made  strong  by  a 
warranty  deed  from  the  headquarters  of  the 
Spiritual  glory  of  movement.  Truth  ever 
reaches  us  through  the  lesser  channels  of  our 
understanding.  The  streams  that  water  and 
irrigate  the  earth  are  only  the  lesser  influen- 
ces to  tell  us  of  the  great  body-head  of  ocean 
grandeur  that  sends  out  her  rippling  waves 
to  fathom  and  supply  the  hungry  needs  of 
material  forces.  The  sunbeam  is  but  a  ray 
from  the  rounded-out  majesty  of  the  crimson 
ball  that  gives  to  the  earth  her  lights  and 
shades  of  worth.  And  still  we  accept  the 
Sun  as  a  demonstrative  fact,  when  it  is  only 
the  outstretched  arms  of  the  great  planetary 
fire  that  we  discover  with  the  mind  or  eye 
focus  of  sight.  We  also  accept  the  Ocean  as 
a  veritable  truth,  when  we  only  see  her  sur- 
face show  and  feel  her  riplets  of  power  in 
the  outside  world.  And  so,  because  the  body- 
head  of  God's  Spiritual  realms  do  not  usher 
the  new  Jerusalem  from  head  to  foot,  instead  of 
feet  first — as  Truth  is  ever  borne  to  the  plat- 
form of  worldly  vision  and  credulity — the  world 
feels  the  abuse  of  God's  using  small  means 
to  first  make  known  the  fact  of  Spirit  com- 
munion, when  the  larger  powers  seem  more 


BACKWARD   GLIMPSES.  35 

dignified,  more  capable  of  giving  food  or 
knowledge  to  the  aristocratic  mind  of  earth. 
A  rosy  tinted  sunset  prognosticates  a  twenty- 
four  hours  of  pleasant  successive  time,  and 
so  everything  that  is  necessary  for  us  to  know 
is  foreshadowed  to  us  by  some  sign  hung  on 
the  external  camera  of  our  comprehension. 
And  thus  we  are  left  for  every  age  to  cut  its 
own  wisdom  teeth;  and  we,  with  the  sharp 
points  of  our  ripened  understanding,  may  help 
to  pierce  the  cobwebs  hung  in  the  sky  that 
the  old  lady  tried  so  hard  to  reach  with  her 
broom. 


CHAPTER  V. 

iHEKE  is  no  one  point  in  my  life's  his- 
tory that  seems  so  fraught  with  interest, 
so  woven  together  with  substantial  evi- 
dences of  reformatory  activity  to  outpurpose 
the  changes  my  soul  felt,  as  the  era  that  took 
me  from  my  outward  pent-house  and  inner 
temple  of  reconstruction.  The  scales  where- 
with I  weighed  my  deeds  of  error  hung  even- 
ly balanced,  for  I  had  suffered  and  grown 
strong  in  the  purpose  and  power  to  manifest 
myself  a  man  amongst  men;  to  live  my  own 
individuality;  and  if  God  purposed  for  me 
growth  under  the  bonds  of  creedism,  I  was 
willing  to  accept  whatever  channel  God  and 
earthly  reason — I  now  know  the  terms  to  be 
synonymous — had  formed  for  me  to  walk  in 
and  make  a  display  of  my  then  truthful  light 
to  others.  The  darksome  billows  of  trouble 
were  rolling  under  my  feet  and  seemingly 
forever  away  from  me,  for  I  ever  wore  my 
nightcap  of  duty  to  strengthen  the  daylight 
of  Time's  experiences.  What  came  to  me 


BACKWARD  GLIMPSES.  37 

through  intuitive  perception,  I  called  the 
voice  of  God  speaking  in  direct  harmony  with 
my  inclination  of  obeyance.  I  now  know  it 
was  the  God-given  power  of  angel  brother- 
hood speaking  to  my  inner  sanctuary  of  re- 
pose, and  asking  me  to  pick  aloft  for  grains 
to  feed  my  hungry  soul.  And  the  unseen 
power  or  powers  are  ever  watching  to  pour 
oil  into  the  wasting-out  lamps  of  earthly 
lighting.  My  steed  of  merit  was  ever  tied 
with  the  cord  of  youthful  error;  and  although 
I  had  walked  away  from  that  past,  the  public 
mind  ever  tied  for  me  a  knot  that  I  could 
never  slip  without  a  hurt  to  some  part  of  my 
being.  This  spirit  of  unforgiveness  has  done 
more  harm  in  the  world  than  the  crimes  or 
pettifogging  spirit  of  thievery,  for  which  the 
world  must  jump  accounts  when  the  great 
day  of  settlement  rides  to  the  brink  of  indi- 
vidual note-paying  of  this  world's  life  ac- 
count. Socrates,  the  world-wide  fameist, 
possessed  philosophical  merit  of  sufficient 
strength  and  import  of  bearing  to  sway  and 
even  master  the  popular  mind  of  his  day  of 
grace  on  earth.  Socrates  was  skilled  in  the 
art  of  fishing  for  public  notice  and  favor. 
He  even  tied  his  council  packages  with  the 
blue  ribbon  of  peace,  emblematical  of  the 


38  BACKWARD  GLIMPSES. 

structured  body  that  he  wished  formed  around 
his  temple  of  rule.  And  Socrates  left  his 
unfurled  banner  in  the  bygone  world,  where 
the  breezes  of  love  have  fluttered  it  before 
each  successive  generation,  until  Socrates, 
from  his  world  of  Spiritual  glory,  ever  finds 
himself  in  the  front  ranks  of  Time's  illustri- 
ous and  honored  men.  When  Forsythe,  the 
English  Baronet,  played  his  figure  card  to 
secure  his  titled  honors,  he  sprung  a  trap 
that  caught  him  in  its  rebound  of  clashing 
merit,  and  he  went  down  to  the  bottom  round 
of  his  consequential  grandeur  with  his  top- 
knot displaced  by  the  Cromwellian  power  of 
government. 

Stringency  has  ever  been  followed  by  the 
running  stream  of  more  liberal  views  until 
the  present  time,  when  the  world  seems  to  be 
chasing  the  gauntlet  for  a  wide  extension  of 
the  silvery  coating  that  makes  palatable  the 
pill  of  peace.  Emerson,  the  English  poet, 
was  a  somnambulist,  walking  in  the  very  face 
of  danger,  with  his  feet  and  hands  tied  with 
the  rope  of  double  security;  for  the  angels 
pinioned  his  flight,  that  when  the  world  grew 
bitter  and  hard  to  please,  the  arrows  of  Truth 
flew  faster  and  firmer,  and  settled  in  the  rank- 
ling wounds  of  the  world's  financial  difficul- 


BACKWAKD  GLIMPSES.  39 

ties.  Emerson  fought  with  the  poignard  of 
peace,  and  doubled  his  influence  by  every 
turn  that  has  been  made  by  the  rumbling 
wheel  of  progress.  How  cozy  and  nice  one 
can  be  tucked  away  in  the 'arm-chair  of  ease, 
with  no  thought  of  the  outside  world  of  care 
and  strife — with  no  awakened  sensation  that 
they  have  a  work  to  do — that  their  fingers  are 
needed  to  fashion  and  form  some  article  of 
use  for  somebody,  or  some  place  on  the  course 
ship  of  Time.  Idleness  begets  slothfulness, 
and  slothfulness  is  a  bugbear  around  the 
altars  of  pride. 

Sampson  was  accounted  a  very  strong  man, 
and  yet  Delilah,  with  her  coaxing  and  subtle 
ways,  found  his  key  of  strength  and  applied 
her  battery  for  a  renovation,  whereby  Samp- 
son might  deduce  wisdom,  and  learn  that  all 
strength  is  not  of  an  outward  character,  or 
all  wisdom  a  surface  show. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

iHE  ruling  King  of  the  Ishmaelitic  force 
of  government  was  King  Solomon — 
wise,  no  doubt,  for  his  day  of  wisdom ; 
but  he  was  a  debauchee  on  a  grander  scale 
than  earth  has  since  cared  to  follow,  -if,  in- 
deed, we  except  modern  Mormonism,  which 
is  the  blue-dragon  that  has  reached  out  his 
fangs  from  the  old  templed  witchery  of  Solo- 
mon's power  of  monarchial  reign.  The  Brig- 
ham  Young  of  to-day  has  no  power  outside 
his  weakling  crew  of  licentious  body-servants, 
and  the  armistice  that  he  is  there  forming  in 
those  Salt  Lake  valleys  will  one  day  shake  off 
the  miasma  or  fetish  that  has  crept  in  from 
the  olden  wisdom  of  Bible  teachings.  The 
Bible  can  in  no  way  stand  the  pressure  of 
coming  events,  for  God  lights  up  every  path- 
way of  reform  and  advancement  by  a  brighter 
torch  picked  from  the  tree  of  Purity.  The 
Bible  will  lose  caste  as  a  saving  fund  for  hu- 
manity's sinful  robe  in  accordance  with  in- 


or  THB 

UNIVERSITY 


BACKWARD  GLIMPSES.  41 

tellectual  capacity  for  improvement.  The 
Bible  was  a  dropped  star  when  mind  was 
groveling  in  darkness.  It  came  when  needed  ' 
and  will  be  sustained  as  long  as  the  God  abil- 
ity of  human  intellect  requires  succor  from 
that  branching  stream  put  forth  from  the 
great  fountain  of  overflowing  waters.  God  is 
a  merciful  God.  Pouring  out  His  favors  to  the 
just  and  the  unjust,  His  rays  of  mercy  reach 
all  hearts.  The  stubble  fields  are  made  avail- 
able in  the  due  course  of  the  sweeping  love 
arm  of  growth  that  brings  everything  under 
the  harrow  of  culture.  When  God's  man- 
date says  come,  and  conditional  circumstan- 
ces that  God  twines  around  all  law,  says  go, 
we  can  no  more  help  growth  than  can  the 
corn  that  bursts  its  little  socket  or  germ-bed 
under  the  favorable  condition  of  sun  and 
moisture;  for  the  corn  will  grow  under  favor- 
able atmospheric  pressure  and  by-play  of 
planetary  movement,  and  man's  growth  and 
culture  from  the  stream  of  wisdom  depends 
on  the  irrigated  soil  and  pruning  hooks  of 
merciful  deal  cast  about  each  other. 

When  God  lights  the  torch  of  advance- 
ment, mind  is  on  the  rack  to  find  out  what 
change  of  clothing  God  has  purposed  for  the 
world;  and  if  the  shadings  of  truth  and  error 


42  BACKWARD   GLIMPSES.  • 

blend  and  form  a  compact  to  be  a  united 
force  until  mind  unhitches  from  the  rack  of 
uncertainty  and  glories  in  its  garment  of  en- 
tire truth  and  pleasure  of  wearing,  then 
has  mind  found  its  rightful  dress,  and  God 
has  worked  through  law  to  fashion  its  fitness. 
There  is  no  study  so  complicated  as  God,  for 
in  the  fact  and  truth  of  rny  Spiritual  glean- 
ings there  is  no  study  but  God — no  mind  but 
the  one  God  mind,  whose  branching  sprays 
are  picked  by  the  world  tree  of  use,  and  hung 
in  each  and  every  temple  bearing  the  dust 
mark  of  God's  pointed  finger  of  material  view. 
Therefore,  God  is  the  one  study — the  one 
mind  from  which  to  choose  and  fashion  a  lit- 
tle world  mind  of  our  own  that  we  can  fasten 
to'advantage  and  glorification  to  the  one  mind 
force  of  the  ruling  Deity.  God's  monuments 
of  power  on  earth  are  all  stamped  f  with  a 
clipped  wing,  else  God  might  have  been  su- 
perseded by  some  specialty  of  human  wis- 
dom that  is  ever  claiming  a  ride  of  superior 
merit  in  God's  boat  of  acknowledged  partiality. 
"When  will  the  world  see  and  make  known  the 
fact  that  we  are  all  drifters,  all  sinkers,  and 
all  swimmers;  that  we  are  born,  that  we  are 
ble*d,  and  suffering  is  the  sure  result  of  being 
born  and  bled,  and  purification  is  the  pay- 
ment for  the  sin  of  suffering? 


BACKWAED   GLIMPSES.  43 

Galileo  pinned  his  faith  on  the  starry  firma- 
ment, and  all  the  exhortation  from  Divinity's 
call-house  of  show  was  from  the  open  mouth- 
piece of  firmamental  grandeur.  God,  to  Gali- 
leo's mind,  rode  in  the  overarching  heavens, 
and  pinned  His  mantle  of  glory  with  the  stars 
he  was  trying  to  fathom.  Astronomers  of  all 
ages  and  of  all  degrees  of  knowledge  have 
supposed  that  in  searching  the  planetary 
world  or  worlds  that  they  were  coming  near- 
er the  great  hocus  pocus  of  first  cause,  when 
God  is  no  nearer  other  worlds  than  the  world 
of  earth;  and  for  a  systematic  hunting-ground, 
where  a  great  variety  of  game  is  to  be  cap- 
tured, earth  holds  the  stellar  key  that  will  un- 
lock more  scientific  law  force  than  any  other 
planet  yet  discovered  or  discoverable  by 
the  intelligent  mind  of  man.  The  worlds  in 
space  are  co-operatic  with  our  earth  planet, 
and  move  as  much  at  the  call  of  earth  as  earth 
gives  from  her  body-house  for  the  satisfaction 
of  elementary  hunger.  There  is  no  stingi- 
ness in  the  laws  that  govern  the  system-house 
of  worlds.  It  is  give  and  take,  from  center 
to  circumference  of  God's  body-head  of 
worlds  hung  on  His  arm  of  love,  that  is 
swayed  by  no  power  but  Truth,  and  shaken  by 
no  force  but  the  hopeful  heart  of  humanity. 


4A  BACKWARD   GLIMPSES. 

God  is  a  traveler  at  large,  running  the  block- 
ade with  the  licensed  privilege  of  a  guest  at 
home  who  dares  to  intrude,  because  intrusion 
is  the  sticking-pin  of  council  claim.  God  is 
our  Father,  Mother,  friend  and  protector — 
our  law  of  activity  and  circumnavigation — 
the  one  budding  promise  that  actuates  our  all 
of  life.  God  is  our  celestial  guide,  and  our 
mundane  hero  that  is  ever  beckoning  us  to 
the  highest  standard  that  can  be  reached  by  our 
system-house  of  motionary  law.  God  is  ever 
drawing  us  to  the  platform  of  accountability 
— ever  saying,  search  well  your  hearts,  and  let 
purity  storm  the  castle  and  become  the  rout- 
ing foe  to  the  oppressive  works  of  sin.  We 
are  God's  fledging  birds,  sent  out  from  the 
mother  side  of  God's  coop-house  of  consan- 
guinity, and  we  pick  the  star  of  individuality 
from  the  Christly  tree  of  beneficent  reign, 
and  wear  it  in  accordance  with  our  will  sweep 
of  strength  to  conquer  the  difficulties  that  be- 
set our  pathway. 

A  murmuring  spirit  of  discontent  shows 
its  grevious  bugbear  marks  in  all  our  raiment 
of  outside  show,  and  in  the  winding  para- 
phernalia that  goes  to  form  our  Spiritual 
robement  for  the  wear  and  tear  of  eternity. 
Christ  fought  against  sin — fought  the  animal 


BACKWARD   GLIMPSES.  4 

with  the  Spiritual — the  bad  with  the  hedge- 
hammer  of  good — and  Christ  was  a  conquer- 
er  over  the  enemy  at  large  every  day  of  his 
life.  His  merciful  spirit  has  ever  been  His 
charm  of  power;  and  Christ  will  ever  do  fora 
saving  fund;  and  the  world  at  large  can  al- 
ways find  in  His  wide  and  extensive  field  of 
loving  attributes  some  spray  of  redemption 
that  could  be  gathered  to  grace  the  pathway 
of  salvation.  Christ  is  the  old  school  doctor, 
as  the  world's  saying  is,  whose  medicines  will 
ever  grace  and  heal  the  heart  and  soul  wounds 
of  the  home  circles  of  civilization;  and  the 
homeopathic  doses  have  made  pure  and  strong 
the  decoction  syrup  that  will  equalize,  and, ' 
therefore,  harmonize  the  free  will  spirit  that 
has  started  and  grown  under  the  purest 
treatment  that  the  world  has  ever  recognized. 
Christ  bears  the  flaming  sword  that  is  to  cut 
down  and  destroy  evil;  and  Christ  also  bears 
the  white  banner  of  peace.  And  the  inscrip- 
tion letters  read:  "Let  Good  be  the  hatchet, 
and  Evil  or  Sin  the  head  laid  on  the  block  of 
sacrifice."  The  deluge  that  will  swallow  up 
and  make  available  Christ's  living  principles  of 
worth  instead  of  His  dead  gore,  which  has 
well  nigh  served  its  purpose,  will  be  the  del- 
uge of  brotherly  and  sisterly  unity,  the  heart 


46  BACKWABD   GLIMPSES. 

and  hand  purpose  of  united  effort  to  sway  the 
body-head  of  humanity  to  the  high  tide  wa- 
ters of  soul  purification.  For  soul  is  the 
mounting  man,  and  Spirit  the  indwelling  sav- 
iour guarding  the  way  over  the  rough  crags 
of  progressive  life. 

Spirit  fashions  its  own  redeemer.  One  per- 
son's point  mark  of  ascension  would  be  no 
guiding  star  for  another  to  follow  along  life's 
thorny  road  of  trouble.  Each  person  must 
pick  their  own  pathway  over  and  through  the 
hills  and  dales  of  life,  and  the  pruning  and 
grading  must  be  done  with  our  own  fingers 
of  care,  lest  our  earth  posters  fail  in  the  pur- 
-  pose  for  which  they  were  formed.  God  or  con- 
science can  never  judge  us  from  another's 
standpoint  of  accumulated  wisdom  or  glory, 
because  God  or  conscience,  to  the  educated 
mind  of  wisdom,  places  no  confidence  in  creed ; 
and  if  we  were  to  judge  or  be  judged  by  anoth- 
er's standard  of  growth,  we  should  be  creedists, 
and  that  is  a  mountebank  structure  we  are  try- 
ing to  get  loose  from  and  saunter  away  on  our 
own  props  of  responsibility.  God  saves  the 
world  by  the  care  and  protection  of  the  or- 
ganic institutions  of  manhood  and  woman- 
hood thrown  around  each  other,  and  the  more 
selfish  the  spirit  that  actuates  individuality, 


BACKWAED  GLIMPSES.  47 

the  less  of  salvation  on  the  high  tenor  key 
can  reach  individual  movement.  God  fash- 
ions to  keep,  and  never  tires  of  His  struc- 
tures formed,  but  learns  from  experience  that 
perfection  is  not  of  an  earthly  nature;  but 
the  growing  largeness  of  God's  heart  expands 
and  perfects  everything  in  its  own  right  time. 
We  cannot  get  away  from  God,  because  He  is 
our  treasure-house  where  all  is  invested.  If 
we  ascend  the  mountain  top,  God  is  there, 
with  his  help  arm  of  strength  to  sustain  us  in 
our  high  altitude  of  flight  and  noble  daring. 
God  is  also  with  us  in  the  valley  depths  of 
bur  crumbling  natures,  and  breasts  all  the 
circumstances  that  makes  us  a  sinking  cargo 
on  board  the  freight-ships  of  Time.  There- 
fore, we  are  never  without  our  God;  but  we 
often  fail' to  hear  His  voice  of  counsel  and 
advice,  and  failing  to  hear,  we  lose  our  inter- 
est in  the  spirit  that  protects  the  right  and 
suffers  the  wrong.  God  is  our  shipment  stall, 
where  the  good,  bad  and  indifferent  articles 
of  our  interior  wardrobe  are  brought  for  ex- 
amination, and  whatever  is  worthy  for  further 
use,  God  tries  to  succor,  and  by  the  use  of 
the  spirit  of  renovation  the  world  is  moved 
to  independent  footing. 


CHAPTEE  VII. 

jHEEE  is  no  power  so  great  and  potent 
~  as  love.  It  keeps  time  with  our  every 
want,  and  leads  us  no  farther  than  we 
are  able  to  go.  Love  is  in  duty  bound  to 
take  care  of  us,  because  love  fashioned  our 
outfit  and  stamped  us  with  the  Divinity  mark, 
that  in  straying  from  the  fold  of  Christian 
duty  and  brotherly  and  sisterly  unity,  the 
mark  would  hold  good  for  our  return,  when 
love  had  tried  all  fields  and  have  been  torn 
by  the  briars  and  brambles  that  infest  the 
uncultured  patch-grounds  that  mortals  fain 
must  travel;  for  a  hidden  treasure  is  ofttimes 
found  in  a  soul  that  has  wandered  through 
the  quagmire  and  low-down  valley  depths 
that  make  up  the  variety  of  earth  life.  A 
mind  that  has  only  gleaned  from  the  rosy  and 
slipper-footed  side  of  mundane  story-telling 
can  have  no  prize  tale  in  his  or  her  catalogue 
of  gifts  for  the  world's  reading;  because  hair- 
breadth escapes  and  squalid  misery  must 


BACKWAED  GLIMPSES.  49 

some  time  enter  into  the  fate  of  a  hero  or 
heroine,  to  make  a  tale  of  fiction  pass  cur- 
rent in  a  world  that  turns  the  cold  shoulder 
on  a  prototype  enactment  in  real  life.  The 
world  has  ever  dealt  more  leniently  and  feel- 
ingly with  crime  dressed  fashionably,  and 
sorrow  with  its  long  vail  of  crape;  for  pov- 
erty, mixed  with  crime  or  wrong  doing,  pre- 
sents no  claim  of  merit.  It  stands  a  sentinel 
of  pity — and  that,  with  some,  is  but  contempt 
— at  the  doorway  of  individual  mercy,  asking 
for  fellowship,  for  counsel  and  advice,  and 
for  the  love  arm  of  protection  to  strengthen 
the  weakness  that  could  not  refuse  the  tempt- 
er's call.  Love  is  better  as  an  active  agent 
in  our  hours  of  soul  and  body  hunger  than 
reason,  if  reason  is  to  lay  aside  the  sheeny 
mantle  of  love;  for  reason  is  a  cold  moralizer, 
while  love  is  ever  dressed  for  army  service, 
and  will  stand  a  picket  on  duty  to  warn  us  of 
the  approaching  foe.  Love  never  tires — 
never  is  afraid  of  getting  sick  from  over-exer- 
tion ,  for  it  is  fed  and  kept  warm  and  free  by 
the  Father  and  Mother  hand  outstretched 
from  the  fountain  heart  of  Deity.  Oh !  God, 
we  thank  Thee  for  the  stream  that  never  fails, 
and  for  its  portrayed  manifestations  in  all 
the  varied  details  of  life.  And  we  thank 
(3) 


50  BACKWARD   GLIMPSES. 

Thee,  thou  great  and  Holy  Spirit,  for  the 
mind  gift  to  comprehend  the  glory  of  Thy 
Christly  reign,  and  for  the  advantage  ground 
gained  over  the  errors  of  past  theology;  for 
Thou,  oh!  Father,  art  the  freeborn  mind 
function  that  comprehends,  sustains  and  ele- 
vates the  lesser  mind  of  man  and  woman  par- 
takement.  Love  is  God's  weapon  of  salva- 
tion— the  rod  that  ever  points  to  the  right 
side  of  humanity,  digging  its  way  through 
the  rough  and  uneven  by-lodgments  of  error, 
out  to  the  sunny  and  more  prosperous  educa- 
tional font  of  being.  The  word  love,  in  its 
sounding  articulation,  has  the  cooing  thrill 
that  flashes  through  every  part  of  sensational 
life;  and  love,  in  its  expressed  force,  leads  us 
to  forget  everything  but  the  mountain  weight 
of  ecstacy  that  overbalances  and  sweeps  away 
all  selfish  desire  in  the  human  heart. 

And,  again,  true  love  never  flatters ;  it  buoys 
us  up  with  the  hope  to  become  worthy  of  the 
tenderness  surrounding  the  self-sacrificing 
spirit  that  stakes  all  for  the  good  and  well 
being  of  another.  God  has  staked  all  for  the 
uprising  of  the  soul  element  portrayed  in  the 
symbolic  figure  show  of  Christ,  for  Christ  is 
but  the  representation  of  all  goodness  classi- 
cally illustrated  in  the  form  or  figure  of  man- 


BACKWAKD   GLIMPSES.  51 

hood.  And,  again,  God  has  staked  all'in  hu- 
manity; for  in  all  the  variety  and  vastness  of 
creation's  grandest  outlay,  man  has  life  from 
the  component  department  of  the  surging 
whole.  God  is  mysterious  and  strange  in  His 
might  and  forms  of  expressed  love;  and  I 
doubt  if  the  all-glowing  first  cause  under- 
stood the  use  of  any  tool  in  the  vocabulary 
of  science  but  what  was  tipped  with  the  star- 
shimmer  point  of  love ;  and  the  welding  band 
of  God  escapement  must  first  be  elongated  by 
the  hero  or  heroine  who  can  bring  the  white 
heat  strength  of  love  to  fashion  the  belt  or 
circle  badge  thrown  around  the  world  king- 
dom of  social  intercourse  and  ingrafting  of 
new  fibers  to  the  body-head  of  progress. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

JOVE  is  the  awakening  gun  from  the  bat- 
tle-field of  error,  and  it  will  be  heard 
and  recognized  as  a  booming  prelude 
to  the  soft-toned  guitar  strains  that  ever 
breathe  co-operative  harmony  and  peace 
through  the  law  of  concordance.  No  lady's 
bower  is  complete  without  the  low-toned 
witchery  of  the  silver-mouthed  guitar;  and  is 
it  not  because  that  instrument,  above  all  oth- 
ers, lingers  mostly  around  the  table-land  of 
love,  and  fills  the  soul  with  its  dropping  ca- 
dences that  seem  like  the  fluted  outgushes 
from  the  songster  birds  of  Paradise?  Love 
has  many  tones,  and  none  have  reached  the 
full  warble  that  shows  the  power  invested  in 
whole  notes.  Agassiz,  the  hero  of  chemis- 
try, ever  lit  his  search  ground  with  the  fire 
that  was  to  warm  and  bless  others.  No  pent- 
up  Spirit  can  labor  successfully;  for  if  we 
give  out  to  others,  there  will  be  an  equiva- 
lent return;  and  although  it  may  not  always 
come  before  the  outward  sense  of  sight,  our 


BACKWARD  GLIMPSES.  53 

liarmonizer  within  acknowledges  the  free-born 
gift  for  the  redemption  of  soul  selfishness. 

In  finding  my  way  back  to  earth  I  am  caught 
in  ten  thousand  different  channels  of  lively 
existent  labor,  and  each  and  every  department 
of  outwrought  systematic  work  is  filled  with 
the  essence  or  spirit  of  cultured  love ;  for  love 
needs  tuning  and  shaping  to  fit  each  advance 
stage  of  man's  interior  development.  Love 
to-day  is  in  the  swaddling  cloth  of  inefficiency 
comparatively  speaking;  for  how  many  souls 
of  earthly  lineage  would  take  the  poor  men- 
dicant from  the  street,  to  ride  with  them  in 
their  carriage  of  ease ;  and  how  many  are  there 
in  earth's  staple  fund-house  of  aristocracy 
that  send  a  wafting  thought  into  the  by-ways 
and  alleys  that  are  filled  with  the  unfortunate 
ones  of  earth's  forge tfulness;  and,  again,  are 
there  many  who  would  carry  out  to  the  suffer- 
ing poor  the  loaded  trays  that  grace  the  side- 
board of  their  elegant  dining  halls?  Cul- 
tured love  is  never  found  where  wealth  is 
ashamed  of  the  -poor  face  "of  poverty.  And 
I  thank  God  that  the  blasting  sentiment  is 
confined  to  the  details  of  body  dressment. 
Love  is  an  Anglo-Saxon  word,  used  to  express 
harmony  in  sentiment  or  feeling,  and  will  dig 
where  no  other  power  shows  even  the  face  of 


54  BACKWAED   GLIMPSES. 

concern.  It  is  God  wise  to  build  up  the  love 
nature,  for  by  so  doing  we  can  better  commune 
with  the  all-wise  Jehovah  of  first  cause,  first 
principle,  and  first  love.  We  can  find  no  bet- 
ter teacher  for  the  expansion  of  our  love  na- 
ture than  the  Father  and  Mother  God,  whose 
every  step  is  an  advance  love  movement  to 
foster  some  poor  weakling  caught  in  the 
meshes  of  despair. 

I  well  remember  one  scene  in  my  journey 
from  earth  which  has  ever  borne  with  me  its 
lasting  impression.  I  had  been  on  a  mission 
of  mercy  to  try  and  evangelize  and  prune 
out  the  weeds  that  ignorance  was  weaving 
about  a  small  colony  situated  on  the  Isle  of 
Patmos.  Its  district  locality  is  the  interven- 
ing hedge  running  between  two  city  sites  of 
eminence  and  wealth,  situated  in  the  constel- 
lation or  glimmering  foothold  of  Androme- 
da. Now  the  isle  or  island  hedge-sight  of 
Patmos  is  only  remarkable  in  one  point  of 
view;  its  name  has  its  significance  in  the 
breastwork  of  friendship  thrown  up  for  pro- 
tective force  around  a  band  who  at  the  time 
of  my  sojourn  there  were  striving  to  see  the 
light  from  God's  co-operative  workhouse, 
whereby  they  could  be  made  stronger  and  bet- 
ter, and  more  worthy  as  props  to  stand  the 


BACKWARD   GLIMPSES.  55 

wear  and  tear  of  protective  guardianship. 

The  incident  I  here  relate  was  of  a  nature 
and  quality  that  touched  my  whole  love  na- 
ture, and  gave  me  a  keen,  sharp  sense  of 
never  before  having  known  the  meaning  of 
the  term  love  as  expressed  in  living  deeds. 
I  had  journeyed  far  and  long,  and  sought  an 
inland  shelter  for  rest  and  quiet,  and  it  would 
seem  that  my  outfit  of  angel  vision  wafted 
me  to  this  habitation  for  the  precise  lesson* 
that  I  received.  The  dwelling  wherein  I 
found  lodgment  and  care  was  an  octagonal 
shape,  built  on  the  plan  of  God's  eternal 
whole,  and  the  rough  corners  of  eight  angle- 
dom  were  the  standing  proof  that  the  hewer 
of  reform  was  needed  to  make  the  circle  ideal 
a  rounded-out  structure  of  harmonious  worth. 
In  this  battlement  of  brotherly  and  sisterly 
co-partnership  there  appeared  a  man  wearing 
the  radiance  of  every  Christly  attribute  that 
had  been  sprouted  in  the  fiery  furnace  of  ad- 
versity. I  asked  the  man,  Varies,  what  seemed 
to  be  the  need  in  that  district  of  straightened 
means  and  dormant  powers  of  comprehen- 
sion. The  man  seemed  troubled  for  a  mo- 
ment, when  there  darted  across  his  counten- 
ance the  sunbeam  ray  of  hope,  and  he,  stoop- 
ing, took  from  amidst  the  assembled  group  a 


OF  THB 


56  BACKWARD   GLIMPSES. 

tiny  bright-eyed  child  and  sat  him  down,  and 
taking  the  boy  the  while  upon  his  knee.  Now 
this  wee  pet  child  had  learned  to  love  this 
man.  The  aroma  of  Yaries'  nature  had  filled 
the  child  with  strength  and  trust,  and,  there- 
fore, when  Yaries  said,  "Ino" — signifying 
innocence — "Ino,  where  is  God?"  the  child 
looked  up  and  startled  wonder  crept  through 
jevery  lineament  of  sweetest  beauty.  And  again 
said  Yaries :  "  Ino,  where,  who  and  what  is 
God?"  The  child  sprang  down  and  stood 
erect  before  his  questioner,  and  with  lisping 
sweetness  said :  *  'Why,  papa  Yaries,  I  though^5 
you  was  God."  "Well,  now,"  said  Yaries, 
"  Ino,  why  did  you  suppose  me  to  be  God  ?" 
" Because/'  said  the  child,  "you  mean,  and 
do,  and  live  so  much  for  everybody."  €<  Well, 
then,"  said  Yaries,  "Ino,  here  has  come  a 
man  a  long  way,  and  has  sought  shelter  with  us. 
And  he,  too,  wants  a  work  to  do  here;  but 
since  I  am  your  God  and  do  everything  for 
everybody,  there  can  be  nothing  for  him  to 
do  here,  can  there  ?"  The  child  seemed  puz- 
zled, and  there  shot  across  his  face  of  trust  a 
gleam  of  doubt,  and  looking  up  at  me  with 
simple  wonder  said :  ' '  Maybe  you,  too,  are 
God,  for  you  want  something  to  do  for  some- 
body; and  I  will  take  hold  of  my  big^  papa's 


BACKWARD   GLIMPSES.  57 

hand  and  lead  you  round  until  you  find  some- 
thing to  do,  for  I  guess  my  papa  Varies  needs 
cme  help,  for  I  heard  him  say  that  this  place 
must  have  an  educational  board  of  sound  di- 
rectors; and  maybe  you  will  fix  that  up  for 
good  big  papa,  who  has  so  much  care.  If  I 
was  bigger  and  knew  what  them  words  meant, 
J  would  go  and  do  what  he  said."  Now  Ino, 
the  child  innocence,  taught  me  the  full  and 
true  Ineaning  of  the  Father's  uttered  words : 
"If  ye  love  me,  ye  will  keep  my  command- 
ments." 


CHAPTER  IX. 

MIGHT  cite  other  incidents  of  interest- 
ing merit  that  happened  while  duty  kept 
me  on  the  Isle  of  Patnios,  but  my  time 
with  this  work  is  limited,  and  I  must  touc*h  on 
my  experience  in  different  localities  of  Spirit 
life. 

If  circumstances  should  permit,  which  at 
present  seems  doubtful,  I  would  like  to  give 
a  broader  and  more  prolix  account  of  my  ex- 
tended journey  up  to  its  present  terminus  of 
gain;  but  should  I  never  again  on  the  course 
of  Time  show  proof  of  my  individuality 
through  the  pen,  I  hope  to  come  in  rapport 
with  the  public  mind  of  earth  through  the 
outgush  of  a  John  Bunyan  prayer.  My  me- 
dium is  being  bathed  in  the  waters  of  devel- 
opment, and  when  I  shall  reach  my  hand 
across  the  stygian  waters  to  lead  her  to  the 
platform  of  public  duty,  my  voice  shall  be 
heard  saying  ' '  come  forth  to  prayer."  Christ 
spoke  of  His  second  coming;  and  he  also 
said,  ' '  If  I  go  from  you,  I  shall  draw  all 


BACKWARD   GLIMPSES.  59 

hearts  unto  me."  Now,  Christ,  wearing  the 
stamp  and  outfit  of  humanity,  chose  us;  and 
by  us,  I  mean  the  whole  race  of  human  life, 
to  be  His  followers;  and  we  being  the  sheep, 
with  the  admixture  of  goatism,  must  follow 
back  on  the  shepherd's  track  according  to 
our  ability  of  endurance  and  gift  at  tracing 
the  bee-line  march  of  Christly  justice  of  deal. 
' '  For  I  will  in  no  way  cast  you  off,  if  ye  are 
found  keeping  my  commandments,  even  from 
the  least  unto  the  greatest."  Therefore,  be- 
ing prototypes  of  Christ,  we  are  His  by  force 
of  law,  and  can  never  unwind  ourselves  from 
His  presence.  God  gave  us  life  through  the 
natural  function  of  growth,  and  placed 
Christ's  lever  of  strength  in  approximate 
range  with  our  development  of  understanding. 
Christ  was  born  full-fledged.  His  holy  spirit 
lifted  him  from  one  stage  of  development  to 
another,  and  gain  in  love  power  sat  on  every 
throne  of  advanced  life.  When  mind  can 
comprehend  Christ,  we  shall  be  as  Gods, 
knowing  good  from  evil ;  but  until  that  time  ar- 
rives, let  us  work  every  oar  for  knowledge,  re- 
membering, if  we  get  into  deep  water,  where  the 
whirlpools  play  lavish  work  with  our  strength 
of  detective  force,  it  will  be  pleasanter  to 
there  sink  if  the  breakers  come  too  heavy, 


60  BACKWARD  GLIMPSES. 

than  to  swamp  in  a  mud-puddle  with  the  cord 
of  ignorance  tied  about  our  feet,  and  hitched 
to  the  post  of  creedal  oppression.  The 
world  is  filled  with  the  systematic  work  of 
priestly  show,  which  would  not  cloud  the  face 
of  Nature  so  much  if  the  banners  of  human 
poverty  did  not  wave  from  so  many  pent- 
places  of  despair,  showing  that  creeds  flour- 
ish the  better  and  still  cling  to  the  old  Phar- 
isaic outshow  of  pride.  God  built  the  world 
from  the  depths  of  his  wisdom — from  the 
holy  ground  of  first  principle.  God  stepped 
to  the  world,  and  has  ever  worked  through 
the  financiering  pulpit  of  ministerial  duty. 
And  when  God  claims  the  world,  or  its  staple 
fund  of  spiritual  and  animal  life — for  the  ani- 
mal is  the  staging  built  round  the  spiritual, 
and  belongs  just  as  essentially  to  first  cause 
as  the  spiritual — and  when  God  claims  the 
one.  He  also  reaches  for  the  embodiment  of 
earthly  substance,  that  no  part  may  slip 
through  His  fingers  of  skillful  use .  When  Na- 
ture sings  her  great  harmonica  of  advanced 
tuneship ,  God  will  have  another  world  facing 
the  sunny  side  of  Spiritual  development.  The 
classics  have  never  yet  been  taught  as  Hudi- 
bras,  the  Greek  templar  of  fame,  portrayed 
the  significance  of  studied  arrangement,  and 


BACKWAED  GLIMPSES.  61 

who  shall  say:  "But  Hudibras  was  taught 
direct  from  God."  As  system  was  God's  first 
law,  the  Greek  writer  seems  to  haveimbibed 
God's  first  order  of  things  to  a  very  great  ex- 
tent. All,  or  nearly  all,  of  the  old  apostles 
laid  claim  to  direct  inspirational  focus  of 
truth.  The  one  or  two  exceptions  seem 
muddled  in  their  views,  and  quote  from  the 
chip-basket  of  another  prelate  of  power.  I 
cannot  see  why,  "I,  John,  saw,"  should  be 
any  more  believed  or  appreciated  at  the  pres- 
ent time  than  the  seeings  of  Andrew  Jackson 
Davis;  fot  I  believe  both  men  stand  high  for 
truth  and  veracity  in  their  own  shoes  of  timely 
wear.  This  spirit  of  unbelief  only  in  the  out- 
standing dishes  of  Bible  seasoning  is  ludi- 
crous and  worthy  of  a  dress  parade  show,  in 
order  to  find  the  tack  or  nail  that  clinches 
the  mantle  or  spirit  of  non-belief  thrown 
around  the  mediums  of  modern  Spiritualism. 


CHAPTER  X. 

!T  would  seem  from  the  Bible  version  of 
God  that  he  gloried  in  mystery —  that  he 
™  must  keep  himself  hid  in  order  to  exer- 
cise more  power  around  the  confused  mind  of 
man ;  and  the  ancients  scarce  ever  thought  of 
God  only  as  a  huge  masterpiece  of  man-like 
skill  of  construction  and  womanly  attributes 
of  tenderness  and  changeableness.  God's  dis- 
position, if  we  take  ancient  mythology  as 
proof  positive,  is  altogether  moody  and  hard 
to  please.  And  our  being  on  the  plank  of  sal- 
vation would  not  indicate  a  safe  ride,  because 
the  billows  of  God's  discontent,  which  are  ever 
surging,  would  surely  upset  our  monopoly  on 
the  freight  or  passenger  car  running  from  the 
God  depot  of  will  to  the  city  set  on  the  hill 
of  aristocratic  grandeur.  I  have  now  been  in 
the  Spirit  world  long  enough  to  determine 
whether  I  shall  ever  meet  God  only  in  the  frag- 
ments of  his  great  designing  power,  or  whether 
I  shall  come  en  rapport  with  a  poverty  God,  with 
manl'ke  abilities  -Jid  proportionate  growth 


BACKWARD  GLIMPSES.  63 

in  the  great  hemisphere  of  use.  The  more  I 
contemplate  God,  and  the  more  I  see  the  man- 
ifestations of  the  great  mind  force  of  Deity, 
the  more  I  am  led  to  wonder  that  finite  crea- 
tures could  ever  have  located  or  personified 
the  active  agency  or  agencies  that  lifted  all 
worlds  from  the  crater  of  incompetent  de- 
sign, to  the  broad  and  glowing  light  of  reve- 
lation's pathway  of  wisdom.  Oh !  God,  I  thank 
Thee  for  Thy  winding  staircase  of  principles; 
for  the  hidden  treasures  laid  in  the  center  or 
inland  vestibule  of  the  voluminous  book  of 
natural  affinities  or  natural  fixtures,  from  the 
shotgun  of  causative  methodical  precision  of 
the  miudality  inborn,  to  the  God  movement 
in  space. 

We  may  say  that  God's  ways  are  past  find- 
ing out.  But  God's  ways  are  the  fixed  laws 
that  scientific  research  is  bringing  to  the  un- 
derstanding of  reason's  sway  of  advancement. 
God  grant  that  no  part  of  his  glorified  honors 
remain  under  the  cover  of  ignorance;  and  may 
the  larger  God  come  at  length  to  be  under- 
stood by  the  lesser  minds  traveling  in  the 
wrake  of  the  infinity  ship  of  first  mind,  first 
motion,  and  first  radicalism,  to  establish  sys- 
tem and  order  from  the  propendity  of  God's 
thinking  brain  of  natural  power's  and  natural 


64  BACKWARD   GLIMPSES. 

expression  of  symboled  meaning  in  a  world 
where  mind  picks  the  first  fruits,  and  gives 
for  the  partakement  of  all  other  minds,  whether 
in  the  garden  of  Eden,  or  in  the  world  garden 
of  want.  The  one  is  but  the  symbol  or  open- 
ing bud  in  the  flower  garden  of  the  other. 
There  is  no  such  thing  as  getting  out  of  the 
whirlpool  of  God's  use.  We  all  fill  and  fit 
the  niche  marked  out  by  the  angling  of  cause 
and  effect.  There  is  purpose  in  every  shoot- 
ing star — in  every  blade  of  grass  that  sends 
its  shimmer  of  green  out  into  the  mingling- 
house  of  matter  to  gladden  the  heart  of  Nature, 
and  also  gladden  the  natural  animal  function 
of  want.  There  is  purpose  and  forethought 
in  the  budding  and  opening  rose;  in  the  po- 
etic movement  of  every  flower;  for  they  all 
symbol  and  portray  the  life  of  man.  God's 
laws  are  the  fixed  purposes  that  will  ever  en- 
dure; and  man  is  but  a  graft  on  the  God-tree 
of  law,  and  each  and  every  graft  must  bear 
its  own  flavored  fruit  into  the  keeping-house 
of  the  Father's  love  and  mercy. 

God  is  prone  to  let  us  be  our  own  saviours, 
lest  we  perish  from  disuse,  or  become  but  a 
handle  to  the  mug  that  contains  the  life  forces 
that  lifts  us  from  our  bended  knees  of  prayer 
out  as  a  standing  guard,  with  hearts  up- 


BACKWARD  GLIMPSES.  65 

lifted  and  hands  outstretched,  saying:  "Abi, 
Father,  give  me  a  work  to  do;  give  me  the 
spirit  of  help,  that  I  may  not  rust  or  become 
touched  by  the  mildew  that  ever  fastens  itself 
around  the  cornered  hedgerows  of  shallow 
growth. "  When  mind  becomes  the  staple  ar- 
ticle to  be  used  for  the  uplifting  of  all  the  na- 
tions in  all  the  worlds,  then  may  we  hope  for 
a  seedtime  and  harvest  worthy  of  the  spirit 
of  repentance. 

Bacchus,  the  God  of  Wine,  was  a  potentate 
of  mythic  power;  but  the  ancient  weakling 
intellect  held  carnivals  in  honor  of  the 
God  power  of  Bacchus.  The  human  mind 
is  ever  prone  to  worship  power,  and  the 
mythic  Gods  but  served  the  reality  for  which 
they  stood  a  substitute.  And  it  is  to-day  as 
of  old.  The  mythic  God  stands  the  power 
of  worship,  while  the  true  essence  of  the 
truer  God  remains  under  the  fettered  yoke  of 
ignorance.  There  is  no  power  so  great  as 
God's  power,  because  every  expression  of  the 
varying  countenance  of  love  is  a  show-mark 
of  integrity  of  purpose,  indicating  strength 
of  will  and  strength  of  character  to  maintain 
the  first  principles  placed  in  the  keep-house 
of  Nature.  God  is  worthy  to  be  shown  in 
all  the  parts  of  His  grandeured  loveliness 


66  BACKWARD   GLIMPSES. 

that  the  hand  of  detailed  order  has  made 
sufficient  for  every  call  of  want,  and  for  every 
outburst  of  enthusiastic  wonder  from  the 
mind  forces  of  man.  God  has  dropped  an 
undertone  bar  for  the  uplifting  and  outheav- 
ing  of  all  the  mystic  calls  that  contain  the 
law  lever  to  work  through  darkness  out  to  the 
broad  light  of  reasonable  forethought  and 
understanding.  Let  us  all  worship  the  great 
Father  and  Mother  Spirit  that  dwelleth  in 
and  about  the  whole  round  of  created  worlds, 
and  of  which  we  all  form  a  part,  and  live 
from  the  same  principles  that  moves  all  ani- 
mated Nature.  Then  can  we  become  con- 
sistent wrorshippers,  and  the  Father's  Throne 
will  be  the  study  ground  where  all  the  har- 
mony of  principles  will  be  developed,  under- 
stood and  applied  in  working  out  the  diagno- 
sis of  the  Father's  will.  May  we  all  hope 
the  day  not  far  distant  when  mind  can  pick 
from  the  sure  Tree  of  Knowledge,  and  the 
fibrous  offshoots  of  sprouting  worth,  be  the 
retentive  fund  kept  in  every  person's  security- 
house  of  brain  monopoly  of  prizeship. 


CHAPTER   XI. 

1HEN  Alexander  the  Great  rode  Iris 
steed  of  power,  the  world,  through 
wisdom,  was  in  pomp  and  show;  that 
the  Alexandrian  forces  of  skill  and  power 
were  God  obtained  and  God  ordained;  that 
God's  specialty  along  the  breastworks  of 
Time  was  to  enforce  the  human  intellect  to  a 
basis  of  exterior  ramification  of  showy  fili- 
bustering movement.  It  would  seem  that 
the  world  is  growing  wise  in  its  dotage ;  that 
the  external  symbols  of  decay  are  assuming 
their  true  value,  and  the  mind  craves  dress, 
ment,  for  the  bygone  poverty  of  apparel  can 
in  no  way  suit  the  present  need  of  fitful  wear- 
ing. 

Mark  Antony,  the  hero  of  Grecian  fables, 
was  slain  by  the  power  and  coquetry  of  a 
false  woman's  falser  charms;  and  the  Mark 
Antony's  of  to-day  are  being  brought  to  the 
feast,  and  thence  to  the  sacrifice,  by  the 
power  they  are  trying  to  rear  in  idleness  and 
shame,  but  which  will  soon  be  pierced  by 


68  BACKWEAD   GLIMPSES. 

the  asp  of  degradation  and  welter  in  the  gore 
of  its  own  shamefacedness.  The  Cleopatra 
of  stubborn  facts  must  soon  rear  a  head  that 
the  nationality  of  America's  undercrust  of  so- 
cial negative  abuse  will  strike  for  the  higher 
wages  on  a  platform  where  mind  can  see  the 
sham  figures  that  are  dragging  the  soul  down 
through  the  mirage  of  Time,  and  the  anxious- 
seat  that  will  claim  the  attention,  when  the 
passover  of  this  life  reaches  us,  will  be  the 
non-preparation  or  education  for  which  we 
are  fitted  to  meet  the  new  experiences  that 
crowd  to  every  par^  of  our  being.  The  world 
has  harnessed  itself,  or  has  been  harnessed, 
for  a  great  work,  by  the  two  laws  of  cause 
and  effect,  which,  in  simple  terms,  signifies 
harmony  and  discord;  and  the  world  can  in 
no  way  throw  off  the  responsibility  imposed 
by  these  two  warring  elements  that  ever  work 
together  for  the  good  of  a  grand  whole.  I 
would  that  all  men  and  all  women  could  real- 
ize the  monarchy  of  spirit  over  matter — the 
feast  of  fat  things  prepared  for  the  soul  that 
lives  in  accordance  with  the  highest  laws 
that  move  and  actuate  the  selfhood  or  indi- 
viduality of  the  human  perceptive  faculties. 
The  rosy  lights  that  spread  themselves  around 
the  lives  of  the  pure  in  spirit  are  filled  with 


BACKWAED  GLIMPSES.  69 

the  halo  of  Godliness,  and*  no  monotonous 
weight  clogs  the  life  activities  of  a  true 
worker. 

I  have  now  been  in  the  Spirit  world  nearly 
two  hundred  years,  and  my  soul  is  still  crav- 
ing the  light  of  more  knowledge — still  ask- 
ing for  food  to  ripen  in  my  brain-work  of 
thought — still  seeking  the  mercy-seat  and  the 
lover's  throne,  with  my  cloak  of  care  ever 
drawn  around  me,  that  its  folds  may  serve  at 
all  times  to  give  warmth  and  protection  to 
some  lone  Spirit  watcher  caught  on  the  tower 
of  forced  ambition.  The  Spirit  world  offers 
no  inducement  to  a  life  of  ease.  No  folded 
hands  are  allowed  to  extend  their  taper  fin- 
gers of  show,  for  idlers  are  ever  caught  in  the 
coil  that  will  tighten  around  their  own  hemis- 
phere of  use.  We  in  Spirit  life  aim  to  be 
found  at  the  Lord's  supper  table,  to  show  our 
willingness  to  eat,  drink  and  be  merry  around 
a  board  spread  and  feast  prepared  by  One 
who  ever  works  on  the  principle  of  succoring 
all  that  need  the  bread  of  life-giving  suste- 
nance. It  is  reported  in  ancient  history,  or 
ancient  historical  fables,  that  Jacob,  a  good 
man  of  Eastern  antiquity  of  birth,  and,  as 
report  goes,  stood  grandfather  around  the  im- 
maculate conception  of  Christ,  reared  a  lad- 


70  BACKWAKD  GLIMPSES. 

der  whereon  he  hoped  to  reach  the  precincts 
of  glory.  Can  we,  at  the  present  day,  re- 
spect the  intellect  that  would  rear  an  outward 
symbol,  and  thereby  expect  to  reach  the  God- 
head of  Power?  Would  not  some  Insane 
Asylum  offer  us  a  sly  retreat  for  our  muddled 
brain  that  was  trying  the  same  hinge  of  ascent 
that  our  predecessor  Jacob  tried  ?  I  wonder 
at  the  inconsistency  of  the  human  mind  that 
can  still  drink  a  beverage  of  satisfaction  from 
an  old  gourd  that  has  been  the  rounds,  and 
drifted  through  the  slime  and  weakling  filth 
of  every  spurious  synagogue  that  has  reared 
its  head  of  show  since  Adam  became  the  first 
man  and  Eve  the  first  woman  on  temptation's 
line  of  march. 

The  Church  filter  from  sin  is  laying  its  last 
wires  across  the  ignorance  of  man.  The  time 
has  been  when  the  church  offered  us  a  high 
seat  in  the  church  militant  of  heaven,  but  the 
church  to-day  is  the  stumbling  block  that 
hits  our  heels  along  the  road  of  progress,  for 
it  no  longer  awakens  thought.  It  has  stewed 
its  last  stew,  and  the  fragments  that  are  left 
worth  preservation,  could  be  served  on  a  tea- 
service  and  satisfy  the  needs  of  the  whole  world. 
The  bread  and  butter  fishers  must  lay  their  lines 
in  a  sea  where  the  big  fish  have  a  few  seed- 


BACKWABD  GLIMPSES.  71 

lings  to  sprout  for  the  needs  of  coming  gen- 
erations; for  I  have  always  noticed  that  the 
spirit  of  monopoly  never  flourishes  when  the 
undercrust  is  left  out  of  the  pie  of  service. 
Whosoever  lacks  the  moral  courage  to  come 
out  from  a  nest  when  every  shell  has  been 
picked,  and  the  tuittering  cry  is  food,  more 
food,  must  mean  to  strangle  the  hatching  pro- 
cess, and  cling  to  the  old  nest  that  offers  life, 
if  the  old  hen  of  ignorance  will  but  step  aside 
and  give  the  new-pledged  birdlings  a  chance 
to  sing  their  delight,  that  setting  is  over  and 
hatching  begun.  I  think  mankind  might  take 
a  lesson  from  the  feathered  songsters  of  the 
air,  or  the  feathered  prelates  that  move  around 
the  homes  of  earthly  comfort,  for  one  nest 
only  satisfies  for  the  brood  in  process.  There 
must  be  new  material  to  fashion  the  birth- 
place of  every  successive  generation  of  crow- 
ing greatness.  And  who  shall  say  that  hope 
may  not  enter  the  crown  of  instinct,  that  some- 
thing better  than  the  last  may  be  reared  on 
the  new  grounds  and  new  material  that  is 
searched  out  with  many  a  sly  look  of  puzzling 
wonder.  I  would  recommend  the  study  of 
henology  to  the  fat  old  deacon  sitting  around 
the  mouthpieces  of  creedal  forms  and  cere- 
monies that  constitute  the  present  style  of 


72  BACKWARD  GLIMPSES. 

church  worship.  I  have  wandered  far  and 
long,  have  drifted  through  the  underbrush 
and  quagmires  of  all  shades  of  social  life,  and 
I  have  never  yet  found  the  church  steeple 
that  would  dive  for  the  poor  outcasts  tread- 
ing the  rugged  shores  of  life.  When  the 
Church  meets  my  view,  that  is  dressed  for  a 
campaign  around  all  the  grades  of  life,  inde- 
pendanfc  of  color,  sex,  moral  or  physical  stain, 
independant  of  the  dimes  and  cents  of  pocket 
show,  or  the  dress  parade  of  fluted  flummery 
that  fills  the  streets  and  clogs  the  church  ailes 
with  the  body  figures  of  sin.  I  say,  when  the 
Church  can  fling  its  free  banner  around  all 
these  stools  of  pentecostal  reign,  without  the 
formality  of  subscribing  to  the  Church  cata- 
logue of  forms,  then  has  the  Church  met  my 
view  that  will  work  out  the  world's  salvation 
through  the  open  door  of  extended  heart  and 
hand  service.  John  Bunyan  to-day  is  not  the 
fettered  man  that  left  the  earth  tied  by  the 
apron  strings  of  another  person's  will.  Even 
the  Presbytery  never  haunts  my  awakened 
conscience,  for  the  back-door  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  will  offer  escapement  to  all  the 
regrets  cast  on  the  Creedal  score  of  deal. 


CHAPTER  XII. 

WILL  commence  this  chapter  with  my 
experience  around  the  equator  or  hemis- 
phere  of  Nador,  a  State  plot  that  bor- 
ders closely  about  the  antiquated  filagree  or 
structure  of  Mars.  Nador  is  situated  on  the 
direct  line  that  leads  from  one  intellectual 
epoch  to  another.  It  might  be  termed  the 
study-room  of  equatorial  designing.  My  ex- 
perience at  that  place  is  filled  with  the  loftiest 
visions  of  beauty;  and  the  hightoned  moral 
and  intellectual  element  that  pervades  the  at- 
mosphere of  Nador  is  worthy  of  being  shown 
to  earth  as  a  standard  by  which  earth  could  rear 
a  pinnacle  that  would  do  honor  to  and  bless 
her  shores  with  the  halo  of  ripened  Godliness. 
There  is  much  prominence  attached  to  the  lo- 
cal bearing  of  Nador.  I  there  met  some  of 
the  greatest  minds  that  have  ever  traveled 
earth.  I  was  drawn  there  by  the  congres- 
sional hand  of  fellowship.  The  Dean  or 
Archbishop  which  presided  at  the  council 
board  of  government,  duty  found  the  world 
(4) 


74  BACKWABD   GLIMPSES. 

of  Nador  broader  than  the  Church  of  Nador; 
and  he  found  as  he  had  ascended  the  scales 
of  progress,  that  the  halls  of  congressional 
dealings  and  bickerings  was  the  doorway 
through  which  we  pass  to  the  true  church. 
The  functional  bearing  of  the  church  will 
ever  take  its  cue  from  the  Legislative  council- 
rooms  of  policy  and  worth.  Let  our  first 
work  be  to  broaden,  equalize  and  harmonize 
the  principles  which  are  the  fundaments  on 
the  sleepers,  so  to  speak,  on  which  the  great 
building  or  superstructure  of  humanity  is 
resting,  and  we  want  no  caving  in  of  the 
sound  material  from  its  close  alliance  with 
the  rotten  timbers  which  have  hitherto  kept 
the  national  honor  in  a  shaky  condition  and 
liable  to  come  under  the  hammer  of  sale;  for 
the  aristocracy,  or  upper  crust,  in  trying  to 
get  so  far  away  from  the  neighborhood  of  the 
undercrust — which  they  are  willing  to  use, 
and  must  have — that  in  spreading  this  plas- 
ter to  cover  them  up  only  as  body-workers, 
the  rich  and  those  in  power,  have  well  nigh 
overturned  the  high-seasoned  dish  flavored 
with  the  spirit  of  selfishness  and  pride — A 
curse  around  the  nationality  of  honored 
George  Washington's  standard-bearing  of 
right. 


BACKWARD   GLIMPSES.  75 

When  I  met  George  Washington  around 
the  checkered  plains  of  Nador,  he  had  added 
many  prize  jewels  to  his  constitution  that 
now  flourishes  before  the  world  bereft  of  the 
true  spirit  that  sent  it  out  a  glowing  power, 
when  Washington  had  acheived  the  victory 
and  won  the  loving  title  of  Father  to  his 
Country,  George  Washington  to-day  is  the 
ingrafted  principle  that  fills  all  the  ranks  of 
America's  fields  of  growth;  and  he  has  laid 
many  a  corner-stone  to  be  the  pointing  em- 
blem along  his  line  of  ascent  and  growing 
wisdom  of  power.  What  attachment  of  claim 
Nador  has  on  the  brain-work  of  the  hero  that 
battled  for  and  upheld  the  Star  Spangled 
Banner,  whose  insignia  fires  the  heart  and 
brain  with  the  noblest  impulses  that  grace 
the  sideboard  of  the  human  character  is 
this  George  Washington  is  working  out  the 
eyre  or  fallstaff  of  party-spirit  and  color;  is 
working  it  on  to  a  basis  where  even-handed 
justice  will  mix  the  shadings  to  the  bringing 
forth  of  the  true  and  lasting  color  of  worth. 
Fidelity  to  principles  must  yet  be  the  clinch- 
hook  of  saving  grace,  and  no  world  that  has 
a  surface  show  of  individuality  wrought  out 
from  the  mind  well  of  God  can  flourish,  un- 
less principle,  the  scientific  arrow,  is  shot 


76  BACKWARD   GLIMPSES. 

from  the  motive  house  to  pierce  every  effort 
of  labor.  The  world  of  earth  is  broadening 
all  her  channels.  The  spirit  of  freedom  is 
shaking  the  dry  bones  of  old  theology's  car- 
cass of  nominal  power  and  the  shaded  eyes 
are  laying  aside  the  goggles  that  have  so  long 
magnified  the  priestly  power  of  saving  worth. 
Aristotle  weilded  the  pen  for  the  upshaking 
of  all  the  baser  passions,  and  he  sunk  his 
own  ship's  crew  with  the  daring  shams  that 
served  as  body  servants  around  a  life  of  inner 
pollution.  How  many  Aristotles  flourish  the 
outward  scheming  of  the  inner  devil  and  how 
many  are  flourishing  the  hell  dragon  in  the 
face  of  the  would-be  virtuous,  but  who  are 
weak  as  vessels  tossed  on  the  billows  of 
angry  winds  ?  These  time-servers,  with  the 
wisp  of  virtue  bound  around  the  bundle  of 
contamination  which  is  propelled  through 
the  marts  of  city  life  by  the  Satanic  power 
of  will,  are  the  spots  that  deface  the  other- 
wise beautiful  camera  of  angel  life  and  the 
white  cross  of  purity,  can  never  hang  an  em- 
blematical sign  before  the  world  vision  until 
the  stubble-fields  have  been  harrowed  by  the 
hand  of  virtuous  design. 


CHAPTER    XIII. 

KNOW  of  nothing  so  conducive  to  hap- 
piness as  living  with  the  sunlight  of 
8?  God's  truths  shining  into  our  souls.  The 
hardships,  tricks  and  wailing  blunders  assume 
a  new  significance,  and  reach  around  and 
about  us  with  almost  a  hallowed  import. 
God,  in  the  light  of  infinite  wisdom,  and  in 
the  truth  of  infinite  purpose,  has  selected  our 
pathway  through  the  fiery  furnace  of  all 
shades  of  life,  that  character  may  be  obtained 
by  a  plunge  in  the  whirlpool  that  floats  all 
kinds  of  drifting  waiflings  caught  on  the  line 
of  God-reflected  march.  Mind  has  the  jas- 
per hue  of  variety,  and  the  deep  shades  blend 
in  harmony  with  the<|J£hter  waves  of  thought, 
making  one  grand  monument  of  variegated 
coloring  that  the  floods  and  undersweeps  of 
Time's  fitful  flashings  can  only  prostrate  for  a 
season;  for  there  is  ever  a  washing  current 
that  restores  all  the  breakers  have  taken 
away.  Mind  is  the  God  storehouse  where  we 
drop  gems  and  pebbles,  and  Time,  the  great 


78  BACKWAKD   GLIMPSES. 

sifting  machine  that  separates  the  gem  crys- 
tals of  worth  from  the  dross  of  impure  mo- 
tive. There  is  nothing  so  flustrating  to  the 
growth  of  soul  on  the  harmonious  key  of  well 
doing  as  tampering  with  vices — as  letting 
thought  go  out  in  the  channel  of  unhallowed 
and  unsanctioned  freedom  of  reign.  Yice  is 
the  giving  up  of  our  highest  endeavors  to  be 
governed  by  the  external  forces  of  unbridled 
want. 

The  so-called  Free  Love  movement,  was  a 
step  taken  to  secure  selfish  indulgence  and  a 
promiscuous  mode  of  co-habitation  under  the 
sanction  of  Spirit  direction  and  advice.  There 
is  a  law  that  sanctions  the  affinity  of  souls 
and  the  affinity  of  outward  living  that,  were 
it  understood  and  applied  in  the  selection  of 
companionship  and  the  uniting  of  two  op- 
posite forces  for  the  object  of  carrying  on  a 
work  of  beauty  and  harmony,  the  world  would 
drift  away  from  all  itsj^ink-holes  of  vices, 
and  become  the  Garden  of  Eden,  with  no 
serpent  to  tempt  the  footsteps  of  woman,  and 
no  willing  Adams  to  be  beguiled  into  a  life 
of  insane  satisfaction. 

The  social  question  is  the  hocus pocus  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  the  bugbear  that  floats 
around  our  endeavors  at  a  righteous  presen- 


BACKWARD   GLIMPSES.  79 

tation  of  outward  living.  What  to-day  har- 
monizes in  interior  principles,  disagrees  with 
the  outward  law  of  force;  for  the  stamp  mark 
that  society  puts  on  individual  effort  at  re- 
construction, is  non-respectability,  a  forcing 
outside  the  pale  of  recognized  decency.  The 
world  has  many  a  hook  and  crook  to  adjust 
with  the  hand  of  justice  before  the  laws  of 
man  can  bind  together  with  truth  and  verac- 
ity the  souls  of  men  and  women.  What  God 
has  joined  together,  let  no  man  put  asunder, 
has  never  been  understood  or  applied  to  the 
Spiritual  part  of  our  natures.  Man  and  wo- 
man live  in  the  fields  of  growth,  and  expe- 
rience is  the  teacher  at  large,  to  whom  we 
pay  tribute  every  moment  of  our  lives. 

I  can  only  experience  to-day  the  things  of 
to-day.  I  can  go  back  in  the  past  with  mem- 
ory. I  can  reach  out  to  the  future  with  hope 
and  the  wishful  spirit  of  prayer;  but  the 
present  is  mine  to  live,  to  feel,  to  see,  to 
smell,  to  hear  and  taste  with  every  sense  of 
God-given  life  and  with  every  sense  of  God- 
given  power  awakened.  To  live  the  highest 
life  I  can  with  my  present  knowledge  gained 
from  the  bitter  and  sweet  tree  of  experience . 
Life  is  a  hazard  in  the  great  stream  of  press- 
ing events,  and  the  die  once  cast,  we  are  the 


80  BACKWARD   GLIMPSES. 

current  swimmers  that  flash  or  flow  according 
to  the  outstrikes  we  make  to  breast  the  waves 
of  public  animosity  and  the  public  fetish  of 
belief.  When  Webster  fired  the  gun  of 
double  dealing,  he  clipped  his  own  wings 
of  power,  and  was  a  flash  in  the  pan,  that, 
secures  nothing,  and  is  a  waste  of  materials 
used.  Webster  had  the  foresight  to  see  that 
America  was  traveling  away  from  her  toils, 
and  he  put  in  a  hitching  proviso  where  the 
germs  of  freedom  would  become  entangled, 
and  be  obliged  to  wait  the  culminating  filter 
of  the  pure  and  good  principles  that  flowed 
through  the  heart  and  brain  of  Abraham 
Lincoln.  The  gulf  stream  that  divides  those 
two  men  will  admit  the  spirit  of  penance  and 
prayer,  and  Daniel  Webster  may  yet  drink 
of  the  true  spirit  of  freedom  and  join  hands 
with  the  martyr  who  "died  to  secure  and  hold 
fast  America's  badge  of  honor.  Abraham 
Lincoln  on  earth  was  a  tower  of  goodness — 
a  fortress  of  strength  that  a  nation  felt  secure 
in  leaning  against,  and  now,  when  earth 
misses  the  magnetic  ring  of  his  solidity  and 
firmness,  the  chambers  of  the  air  are  made 
bright  and  glowing  with  his  noble  presence. 


CHAPTEE  XIV. 

JND  now  let  me  take  my  readers  into  the 
fairy  scenery  of  Bethnomer,  situated  on 
Arcadian  Kiver  Coast  that  belongs  to 
Jupiter's  fund-house  of  glory.  Jupiter  is  a 
glowing  satalite  of  power,  and  all  the  town- 
ships that  comprise  its  mastered  greatness 
are  aglow  with  the  combination  spirit  to 
maintain  its  embodiment  of  God-given  prin- 
ciples. My  raiment  in  this  etherealized  and 
yet  solidified  atmosphere  is  a  gossamer  sub- 
stance, capaple  of  admitting  all  the  rays  of 
congeniality  and  repelling  all  things  not  de- 
sirable to  my  wishes.  My  coat  of  mail  is  ev- 
er ready  with  its  protective  forces,  and  con- 
sequently the  word  fail  was  never  placed,  in 
the  vocabulary  of  speech  used  in  the  planet- 
ary world  of  Jupiter.  Death's  cross  bones 
never  enter  our  fields  of  living  beauty.  Hav- 
ing once  obtained  purification  through  all  the 
grades  of  dutiful  action,  we  live  in  the  har- 
mony of  never-ending  happiness;  live  for  the 
care  and  ultimate  good  of  others,  knowing 


82  BACKWAED  GLIMPSES. 

that  our  day-star  will  ever  be  bright,  having 
sparkled  up  through  the  fiery  furnace  of  trials 
and  tribulations,  the  sifting  processes  that 
separates  the  true  kernels  of  worth  from  the 
chaff  of  disobedience. 

My  home  in  the  fairy  lands  of  Jupiter  is 
a  tenement  outstretch  of  tessellated  grand- 
eur of  design,  but  simplified  in  all  its 
parts  of  cunning  device  and  workmanship 
by  the  hand  of  love,  that  tones  down  all 
power  to  the  simplicity  of  our  wants  and  un- 
derstanding. I  have  my  divan  seats  of  ease, 
my  couches  that  invite  me  to  slumber  and  re- 
pose; but  never,  while  earth  or  any  other 
world  hung  out  on  the  God  motion  of  law, 
presents  to  my  haven  of  security  the  haggard 
faces  of  want,  or  travel  to  my  doorway  of  re- 
ception for  admittance  and  rest,  can  I  burrow 
down  on  cushions  of  ease  and  fold  my  hands 
in  the  security  of  my  purpose  to  serve  God 
with  my  whole  soul,  mind,  might  and  strength. 
I  always  expect  to  be  a  laborer,  because  in 
my  proneness  to  serve  God,  I  have  put  on 
my  armor  of  steel,  defiant  to  breast  every  cur- 
rent of  opposition,  and  dig  my  way  through 
all  the  pools  of  evangelical  discord  that  keeps 
the  world  in  the  element  of  drifting  purpose. 
My  journeyings  since  i  left  earth  have  led 


BACKWARD   GLIMPSES.  83 

through  many  a  wild  wood  and  tangled  briar, 
and  death  ever  stared  me  in  the  face  as  long 
as  sin  abounded  over  good,  and  my  two  na- 
tures warred  with  each  other.  The  world 
drifts  according  to  force  of  habit,  for  habit  is  the 
everyday  garment  that  is  always  handy  and 
ready  to  use ;  and  so  we  go  on,  sticking  to  the  old 
in  preference  to  the  new,  because  habit  has 
grown  to  be  virtue,  and  we  must  discard  all 
new  commers  to  our  haven  of  repose.  There 
is  an  old  adage  that  is  worthy  of  being  enrolled 
on  the  tablets  of  memory  and  brought  often 
to  the  mind's  eye,  to  be  applied  to  our  daily 
course  of  conduct.  In  this  way  it  appeals  to 
my  memory : 

In  charity  lane  there  lived  a  man 

Famed  for  his  habits  old, 

Which  were  these:  to  never  break  bread 

With  any  new  comer, 

Until  he  had  satisfied  every  old  runner 

That  appealed  to  his  pockets  of  gold. 


CHAPTER  XV. 

jHEN  I  left  the  Seventh  Sphere  my 
Lord  and  Saviour  said:  "John  Bun- 
yan,  go  thou  unto  all  worlds  and  preach 
the  gospel  rays  of  truth;  go  and  gather  the 
wheat  from  the  tares ;  go  backwards  and  glean 
in  all  the  fields  where  thou  hast  traveled  bur- 
dened with  a  pack  that  became  lighter  at  each 
advancing  step  of  progress."  And  now,  when 
all  burdens  or  seeming  weights  of  care 
sit  on  my  perch  of  hallowed  gain,  I  can  travel 
with  the  light  and  happiness  of  the  feathered 
songsters  that  fill  the  worlds  of  space.  So, 
having  built  my  home  by  fair  Bethnomer's 
sunny  glades,  I  can  take  my  wand  of  travel 
and  pierce  the  wants  of  any  sphere  or  out- 
grandeured  world  sprung  from  the  trap  of 
God's  command.  My  carpet-bag  for  jour- 
neying is  ever  ready,  ever  packed  for  want's 
service,  and  quickly  opened  at  charity's  call. 
For  God,  says :  he  that  hath  not  charity  is  a 
sink  of  nonservice,  with  no  good  in,  him  to  be 
used  for  a  shuttlecock  in  beating  away  error. 


BACKWAKD   GLIMPSES.  85 

When  Thomas  Paine  wrote  his  Age  of  Reason ; 
the  world  called  him  infidel — called  him  the 
black  sheep  in  the  world's  great  flock  of  puny 
intellects,  that  dare  not  investigate  the  pro- 
found reasoning  of  one  man's  brain  forces; 
and  so  Thomas^Paine  was  accursed — was  tar- 
red and  feathered  in  many  a  man's  soul,  and 
rode  on  the  rail  of  public  hatred  for  daring 
to  think  the  thoughts  that  were  God  placed 
and  God  propelled.  Thomas  Paine  in  his 
bright  sphere  of  advancement,  holds  God  in 
reverential  awe,  because  in  God  he  finds  his 
basis  and  his  ultimatum  over  all  ascending 
glory.  God,  to  the  mind  of  Thomas  Paine 
to-day  is  the  great  standard  bearer  of  Truth  ;the 
shield  over  all  good,  and  the  monster  spirit 
to  hunt  and  demolish  error.  Thomas  Paine 
will  yet  find  freedom  on  earth,  and  find  this 
Age  oj  Reason  floating  more  to  the  public 
channel  of  acceptance.  God  is  over  and 
around  all  well  springs  of  thought,  and  is 
moving  to  the  understanding  of  all  bright 
hued  intellect  of  this  growing  century  in  wis- 
dom and  knowledge. 

Speed  on  earth  is  only  determined  by  the 
fleet  wheel  of  Time,  but  the  velocity  of  Spirit 
movement  outstrips  Time's  Code  of  law,  and 
is  the  moving  processes  that  creates  Time  for 


86  BACKWARD   GLIMPSES. 

the  lumbering  car  of  materiality.  The  for- 
mation of  individuality,  whether  it  be  in  hu- 
manity's specific  designing,  or  in  all  the  other 
grades  of  character  and  kind  that  makes  up 
the  world  we  live  in,  first  starts  on  the  Spir- 
itual basis.  The  germ  of  life  is  first  bathed 
in  the  ether  dew  of  Spirituality.  It  is  God's 
breath  of  love  that  creates  and  begets  for- 
mation, but  it  is  the  breath  of  love  breathed 
through  natural  formative  principles.  There 
is  no  power  of  love  so  great  as  to  grow  an 
apple  on  a  peach  tree  unless  the  essences  or 
juices  of  the  two  trees  blend  in  compact  and 
harmony  of  purpose.  God  has  no  power 
outside  His  principles  of  financiering  merit. 
God  could  never  create  another  world  were  it 
not  in  the  compact  of  his  first  design.  Were 
not  the  germ  principles  left  for  reproduction, 
the  mind  of  man  could  soon  fathom  the  hid- 
ing place  of  God.  God  must  forever  keep 
in  the  advance  of  man — must  ever  have  a 
spiral  font  for  watering  and  purifying  the 
chambers  of  the  soul.  Whosoever  dips  deep- 
est in  God's  well  of  knowledge,  comes  the 
nearest  to  comprehending  the  great  love 
source  of  all  life;  and  he  or  she  that  has  the 
penchant  for  sticking  to  one  badge  of  gain, 
will  ^d  no  newness  or  variety  around  their 


BACKWAKD   GLIMPSES.  87 

sweep  of  influence.  I  have  ever  had  the 
pruning  hook  attached  to  every  sprouting 
germ  along  my  road  of  advancement  until 
purification  sits  on  my  apex  of  glory.  My 
songs  now  are  ever  songs  of  praise,  for  God 
speaks  to  me  through  every  sense  of  my  Spir- 
itual being,  saying:  "I  have  brought  you  up 
from  the  valley  gorge;  I  have  placed  you  in 
the  sunny  clime  of  Bethnomer,  search  ye; 
now,  for  the  right  staff  of  duty,  and  whichso- 
ever way  I  point  your  staff,  go  thou  in  the 
course  of  God  direction,  for  I  will  be  into 
you  a  tower  strength,  and  I  will  build  you  up 
in  all  parts  for  a  symbol  of  great  use,  for  I, 
the  Lord  God,  work  by  means  to  the  accom- 
plishment of  all  good."  There  is  nothing 
so  wise  as  wisdom ;  for  wisdom  is  to  acknowl- 
edge the  truths  we  meet,  regardless  of  the 
pinchback  metal  that  is  ever  found  beside  the 
true  jewels  of  sparkling  worth. 

The  spheres  through  which  I  have  traveled 
have  each  and  all  been  as  real  to  every  sense 
of  life,  as  was  the  sphere  of  earth's  embodi- 
ment. Every  stage  of  being  has  an  out- 
growth or  sphere  awaiting  the  march  of 
Spirit,  and  we  can  only  advance  in  the  orbit 
mind  creating,  for  mind  ever  takes  care  of 
its  body  of  support.  My  earth  pilgrimage 


88  BACKWAKD   GLIMPSES. 

was  my  first  sphere  of  actuality — the  freight  - 
house  from  whence  I  was  stored  for  the  great 
voyage  of  Time  and  Eternity.  On  earth  I 
learned  the  process  of  growth,  and  my  exit 
from  earth  only  stamped  me  with  the  seal  of 
never-ending  life.  I  passed  from  my  earth 
body  by  the  same  powei  of  law  that  fills  the 
world  of  matter  yearly  with  new  types  of 
beauty,  sprung  from  the  old  shell  of  decay. 
I  stood  above  the  earth,  and  yet  I  was  of  the 
earth;  earthy,  for  I  still  enjoyed  and  partook 
of  things  that  satisfied  my  earthly  portions, 
I  ate  and  drank  with  my  friends  as  of  old. 
but  my  food  was  the  essence,  while  theirs  was 
the  substance.  And  so  with  regard  to  earths 
labors  and  duties;  I  still  found  that  my  desires 
went  out  for  the  amelioration  and  purification 
of  the  world  I  had  left  through  the  strength 
and  love  of  Divine  purpose.  I  labored  on 
earth  for  years  after  earth  missed  my  tangible 
presence.  Many  a  spray  of  liberality  have  I 
given  to  the  church  temples  of  dogmatic  wis- 
dom; and  who  shall  say  to-day,  that  the  church 
has  not  received  its  liberal  punch-stick  at  the 
hands  of  Angel  exploration.  God  gave  me 
the  wisdom  to  never  ingraft  a  principle  or  a 
shoot  of  Divine  worth,  until  the  grounds  or 
soil  wherein  1  labored  were  capable  of  repro- 


BACKWAKD  GLIMPSES.  89 

duction,  and  also  capable  of  germinating  from 
the  true  seeds  of  knowledge.  Wisdom  is  the 
holly  branch  of  hope  for  the  world's  regener- 
ation—  the  purling  stream  that  will  purify  and 
irrigate  the  soul-garden  of  man's  immortal 
life.  The  world  that  benefits  us  most,  is  the 
world  we  live  in —  the  world  of  to-day  that  we 
grasp  with  the  hand  of  fellowship  and  call  our 
own.  We  cannot  work  in  the  to-morrow  of 
our  being.  It  is  only  the  needle  of  to-day's 
threading  that  stitches  the  garments  of  future 
wear.  Each  and  every  day  to  me  has  been  a 
day  of  soul  life — a  beverage  drank  on  the 
shores  of  Time,  by  a  man  walker  in  the  eter- 
nal fields  of  gain.  The  ruby  tints  of  life  are 
the  gilded  staggings  of  youthful  climbing,  and 
experience  the  boy  that  dims  the  gilded  stair_ 
case,  making  our  ascent  a  toilsome  journey. 
Death  is  but  a  bar,  let  down  whereby  we  can 
step  to  greener  fields,  and  partake  of  the  fruits 
of  celestial  life.  The  boon  of  peace  ever  fol. 
lows  rightful  doing,  and  my  walking-stick  or 
cane  of  help,  has  always  been  cut  from  the 
tree  of  liberal  sprouting,  and  God  grant  that 
no  interlopers  bar  my  road  of  onward  progress 
and  repletion. 


CHAPTEE  XVI. 

^AETH  holds  a  spell  around  me  that  eter- 
nity's bright  and  flowing  waters  can 
never  efface  or  destroy  its  hallowed  im- 
port; and  ever  while  I  journey,  earth  will  hold 
the  back  ground  scenery  to  John  Bunyan's 
pictured  web  of  life.  I  can  take  long  back- 
ward strides'with  momory,  and  fish  from  the 
whirlpool  of  my  beating  life;  many  a  jewel 
that  suffering  has  polished  and  made  bright, 
for  the  adorning  of  my  spiritual  crown.  And 
I  would  say  to  all  who  are  led  through  the 
fiery  furnace  of  job  like  tribulations,  that  they 
should  be  glad  and  prone  to  thankfulness, 
that  the  sifting  machine  for  their  soul's  puri- 
fication was  placed  beside  the  stream  of  earth 
life.  Job's  sufferings  were  illustrative  of  the 
virtue  of  patience,  of  forbearance,  of  meeting 
the  difficulties  besetting  life's  pathway,  with 
a  cheerful  and  benign  spirit,  feeling  that  the 
Father's  hand  of  love  will  make  smooth  the 
rugged  path  of  rightful  doing.  We  are  all 
more  or  less  prone  to  find  fault  and  murmur 


BACKWAED   GLIMPSES.  91 

at  the  winding  ways  of  our  fated  ship  of  mo- 
tion, little  dreaming  that  God,  the  helmsman 
is  ever  steering  our  motionary  element,  toward 
the  ultimate  and  final  good;  whosoever  expects 
or  exacts  most,  will  ever  find  a  hedge-row  to 
climb  before  the  prizes  which  seemed  of  right? 
their  own  are  worthy  of  acceptance,  or  being 
worn  with  honor  to  themselves. 

God  lights  a  feeble  torch  on  earth, 
Where  howling  winds  and  discord  range, 
And  if  that  one  bright  ray  expand, 
Amidst  the  world  of  gloaming  pain, 
Who  shall  account  his  vigils  lost, 
If  swallowed  by  the  power  of  gain. 

.  The  world  is  filled  with  the  drifting  shadows 
of  manhood  and  of  womanhood.  The  power 
to  be  idle  is  more  apparent  than  the  power  to 
be  useful.  The  dogma  of  fashion  is  laying 
waste  the  principle  house  from  which  we 
build  a  character,  and  from  which  we  ingraft 
our  waving  branch  of  life.  The  destiny  of 
man  is  a  continual  rotating  movement — a 
wheel  within  a  wheel  that  turns  on  its  self- 
ability  of  motion.  God  is  the  whole  solar 
magnate,  and  man  the  fiscal  atom  or  atoms 
that  dives  the  deepest  in  all  the  well  springs 
of  Divine  truth.  There  will  ever  be  a  foun- 
tain head  to  gleam  from,  a  God  to  worship, 


92  BACKWARD   GLIMPSES. 

and  a  soul  to  save.  And  a  world  to  drop 
from  the  great  crater  of  universal  strength, 
and  the  Jehova,  or  All  Father  that  rules  the 
spirit  of  all  time,  and  sits  the  crested  breast- 
work over  all  the  shores  of  eternal  gain,  is 
the  philanthropic  and  eager  spirit  of  har- 
monial  love — the  positive  and  negative  forces 
that  act  in  unison  of  compact  for  the  glory  of 
life's  reproduction  and  the  surmounting  of 
God's  chariot  wheel  of  power.  There  is  no 
basis  for  truth  but  God,  the  inlaid  principle 
that  flourishes  the  magnetic  under-current 
from  which  starts  every  germ  or  bud  that 
helps  to  make  the  world  we  live  in  to-day, 
henceforth  and  forever;  for  the  world  of 
to-day  is  also  the  world  of  to-morrow;  a  vision 
expansion,  a  life  lease  that  is  continually 
drawing  back  pay  for  an  investment  or  indem- 
nity in  the  lottery  of  to-morrow's  keeping. 
Christ  was  never  so  much  felt  or  recognized 
as  at  this  present  time  of  world  travel,  and 
the  glory  of  the  newer  reign  will  eclipse  and 
destroy  his  past  mythic  power. 

Christ  has  ever  ruled  by  force  of  circum- 
stances; has  picked  His  way  on  foot  and  on 
horseback  to  secure  a  permanency  in  the  na- 
tional honor  and  duty,  and  to-day  His  chariot 
wheels  are  being  heard,  and  the  voice  thereof 


BACKWEAD   GLIMPSES.         ,  93 

awakes  a  symphony  in  all  the  national  heart  of 
power.  I  have  never  yet  met  Christ  face  to 
face,  as  an  individuality  bearing  the  out- 
wrought  stamps  of  manhood  or  womanhood, 
and  I  must  confess  that  my  opinion  or  belief 
is  this;  had  there  been  any  one  outspoken, 
standard  bearer,  representing  all  the  virtues, 
and  none  of  the  evils  that  now  flourish  in  all 
human  hearts,  that  specialty  of  wisdom,  good- 
ness and  power  would  never  have  taken  the 
shape  of  man.  I  would  rather  have  dressed 
Christ  in  womanly  apparel,  since  woman  has 
ever  borne  a  broader  stamp  of  virtue,  and  is 
now  likely  to  evangelize  and  purify  the  world 
streams  of  life.  Christ  will  become  a  boarder 
pattern  of  manhood  as  Time  cuts  the  strings 
tied  around  the  huge  bundle  of  ignorant  as- 
sumptive power,  and  woman  must  ever  carry 
the  scissors  to  clip  away  the  loose  threads 
that  hang  around  the  nation's  web  of  glory. 


CHAPTER  XVII. 

JRTEMAS  WARD,  in  driving  his  fun-team 
is  disseminating  the  spirit  of  human 
kindness,  and  building  himself  a  temple 
of  lasting  merit.  For  Truths  uttered  in  the 
spirit  of  love  and  kindness,  will  reach  all  hearts 
better  if  propelled  from  the  merry  side  of 
human  nature.  I  could  have  wished  that  Ar. 
temas  Ward  had  flourished  in  every  genera- 
tion, and  his  spicy  gems  have  graced  every 
path  of  culture  and  growing  garden  of  princi- 
ples. All  writers  carry  an  influential  ability 
that  is  lasting  or  nonprized  as  it  touches  the 
want  stream  of  human  effort  of  attainment^ 
and  all  writers  dose  the  public  mind  accord- 
ing to  their  spiritual  insight  of  the  public  need. 
The  literature  that  has  ever  stood  the  test  of 
timely  wear  and  and  durability  of  motion  is 
the  literature  that  has  awakened  the  spirit  of 
freedom,  the  fluttering  bird  that  opens  the 
door  of  Paradise  that  our  eager  footsteps  may 
enter  therein,  to  wander  in  the  princely  fields 
of  everlasting  verdure.  There  is  no  time  set 


BACKWAED  GLIMPSES.  95 

for  war.  It  ever  follows  on  the  trail  of  wrong, 
motive  powers  of  activity,  and  the  peace  baby 
comes  up  for  a  hug,  when  the  Decatur  of  war 
has  spent  its  furious  gun-charge  of  wrath  and 
destruction.  The  pillars  of  the  mighty  church 
are  falling  to  pieces,  and  the  obsolete  demi- 
god of  rule,  is  sinking  to  the  bottomless  pit  of 
despair;  for  science  is  likely  to  establish  the 
flat-boat  wherein  all  can  ride  and  secure  a  free 
ticket  to  the  land  of  all  soulities.  The  next 
cargo  that  will  enter  the  port  of  common  in- 
terest, will  be  a  body  service  of  downright 
facts,  and  the  public  supervisors  will  find 
help  from  common  masses  of  great  benefit  in 
their  hour  of  need. 

Theoclytas,  the  Grecian  monarch,  made 
fame  the  God  star  of  His  life,  and  ambition 
was  the  towering  hero,  ever  beckoning  Him  to 
mount  the  rostrum  of  public  favor;  and  he 
dipped  and  delved,  and  at  last  secured  a  na- 
tion's grimace  and  the  birthright  gift  to  peo- 
ple the  dark  regions  with  His  body  props  of 
show.  There  is  but  one  power  to  sway  the 
world,  one  lasting  promise  for  life's  aggran- 
dizement, and  that  power  is  love,  and  the 
promise  is  the  soul's  evacuation  of  all  selfish 
aims  in  life.  Oh,  God !  Thy  day  of  splendor 
is  far  in  advance  of  mind  to-day;  but  we  hope 


96  BACKWARD   GLIMPSES. 

that  all  channels  are  becoming  free  whereby 
Thy  glorious  reign  and  all  living  and  loving 
power  may  surge  to  the  brink  of  one  common 
understanding.  Mankind  has  ever  allowed 
God  the  right  and  privilege  to  make  use  o,Ti 
the  term  justice,  and  seeming  to  fear  lest  God 
should  make  a  mistake  and  pick  up  the  levet 
of  love  through  His  great  kindness  of  hear* 
in  dealing  with  His  earth  children.  But  thanks 
be  to  the  true  purposes  of  life,  and  to  the  ever- 
lasting first  cause,  that  justice  and  love  are 
placed  beyond  the  power  of  personality's  twist- 
ings  or  turnings.  Love  and  justice  are  Sia- 
mese in  nature,  and  their  working  power  will 
ever  be  felt  through  the  world's  of  detailed 
order.  Love  is  a  fickle  boy,  and  in  the  traces 
alone  would  kick  at  every  difficulty  barring 
the  road  to  frenzied  delight.  Justice  moder- 
ates the  boy's  activity,  that  no  first  principles 
may  eb  destroyed  and  God  suffer  through  the 
inharmony  of  Siamese  compact.  My  will  to- 
day is  as  self-existant,  as  much  embodied  pur- 
pose, as  when  earth  claimed  my  skill  of  out- 
ward motion.  I  am  working  out  my  God 
ability  of  labor,  am  nestling  by  the  stream  of 
never-ending  happiness.  I  am  awake  to  every 
bugle  cry  of  woe,  and  the  fields  that  claim 
me  most  are  situated  in  the  third  hemisphere 


BACKWARD   GLIMPSES.  97 

of  glory.  There  I  find  patches  of  culture  that 
are  pregnant  and  deep-toned  with  the  golden 
fruit  gathered  from  the  tree  of  suffering.  Man 
wanders  according  to  the  length  of  chain  given 
him,  and  according  to  his  fixedness  of  desire 
to  go  through  any  work  he  may  undertake. 
Every  person  should  have  a  standard  ground 
of  labor  to  secure  a  prizeship  in  the  great  lot- 
tery-house of  God.  We  are  all  prone  to  be 
dissemblers — prone  to  lean  on  another's  staff 
of  encouragement,  letting  our  own  props  of 
natural  ability,  become  weak  from  disuse.  It 
seems  to  be  easier  for  some  people  to  work  in 
a  channel  or  groove  made  for  them,  than  to 
set  their  own  stakes  or  lay  out  their  own  ground 
work  of  operation.  Now  I  would  say  to  such 
people,  and  use  a  homely  expression  to  con- 
vey the  truth  of  the  remark,  that  if  you  turn 
your  own  groundstone,  to  make  sharp 
your  instruments  of  labor,  there  will  be  a 
polish  and  eveness  which  cannot  be  obtained 
to  your  character,  if  a  helping  hand  is  ever 
ready  to  turn  your  wheels  of  motionary 
activity.  The  fellowship  with  that  which  best 
reaches  the  affinity  of  our  intuitive  reasoning 
or  wishing,  because  wishing  first  sounds  the 
alarm  to  reason.  If  I  wish  for  a  God,  the 
wish  appeals  to  reason  to  find  one,  and  rea- 
(5) 


98  BACKWARD   GLIMPSES. 

son  starts  out  instanter  to  gratify  the  power 
of  appeal.  Keason  dips  deeper  than  wishing; 
but  the  power  to  wish  is  reason's  stimulator 
to  action.  Reason  had  just  as  soon  search 
for  a  Devil  as  for  a  God —  just  as  soon  look 
for  mice  as  mountains.  The  desire,  will,  or 
wish,  ever  propels  the  search  of  man's  hero 
of  accountability.  Lycurgus  was  an  ancient 
explorer  after  Truth,  and  he  lit  the  torch  that 
made  brighter  the  pathway  of  the  next  succes- 
sive generation.  He  had  a  desire  for  knowl- 
edge based  on  facts,  and  reason,  hearing  the 
voice  of  desire,  stood  emperor  around  the 
fields  of  garmered  keepsakes,  and  struggle  to 
behold  some  token  of  Truth  that  would  make 
weak  the  towering  temple  of  superstition,  and 
so  one  man's  reasoning  faculties  makes  a  basis 
ground  on  which  another  mind  may  rear  a 
structure  of  great  skill  and  beauty. 


CHAPTEE  XVIII. 


Greece  had  many  competitors 
on  the  road  to  fame.  Many  minds 
coped  together  beside  the  mythic  stream 
of  superficial  knowledge.  The  Grecian  and 
Hellenic  authors  wove  their  web  of  cunning 
sophistry  and  art,  and  applied  it  to  the  mind 
want  of  ignorance  and  efficient  power.  The 
days  of  Herculaneum  and  Pompeii  were  days 
of  deep-toned  struggles,  and  crime  run  ramp- 
ant march  where  spiritual  light  was  based  on 
God's  implacable  wrath  and  devastating 
power  of  control.  I  have  ever  noticed  that 
the  eras  that  have  held  God  in  fear  and  brim- 
stone reverance,  have  always  carried  a  cudgel 
to  make  power  impressive  and,  to  imitate 
the  Father's  style  of  deal.  Hearts  that  are 
leniently  disposed  in  God's  attributes  of  fin- 
ished worth  are  merciful  to  the  world  in 
which  they  live  —  are  more  ready  to  let  love 
point  the  way  in  finding  a  remedy  for  evil. 
The  birch  and  ferule  have  long  since  lost 
their  charm  and  smarting  physical  pain  never 


100  BACKWAED   GLIMPSES. 

yet  caused  a  love  flow  to  the  heart.  Demos- 
thenes has  a  name  in  history  that  glows  with 
courage,  and  the  spirit  of  those  olden  heroes 
is  still  being  felt  around  the  patriotic  heart  of 
Americ  's  brightest  stars.  Gems  are  rarely 
found  in  the  smooth  and  undulating  waves  of 
prosperous  lifehood.  "We  need  a  pinch  from 
the  hand  of  care  and  a  hug  from  poverty's 
fountain  of  affection,  before  we  are  strength- 
ened for  a  combat  in  a  world,  where  the  phys- 
ical man  jars  gratingly  against  the  spiritual 
man  of  finer  perceptive  faculties.  The  rubs 
we  get  from  mother  Earth  quell  our  exuber- 
ant spirit  and  make  us  more  tractable  and  reli- 
able in  the  great  harness  of  onward  life. 
"We  are  never  so  much  at  fault,  as  when  com- 
plaining of  our  destined  road  of  travel,  never 
so  at  varience  with  the  God  monitor  within, 
as  when  dissatisfied  with  present  gain.  Our 
cup  is  never  full  until  it  runs  at  the  brim, 
and  no  amount  of  stirring  can  cause  a  second 
overflow  that  will  be  like  unto  the  first.  As 
fresh  grievances  and  troubles  reach  us,  we 
take  a  higher  staging  that  we  may  more  dar- 
ingly breast  a  fresher  difficulty.  God  or 
conscience  is  prone  to  let  us  reap  in  our  own 
harvest  field,  and  if  we  sow  tares,  we  cannot, 
of  course,  expect  the  pure  kernels  of  nour- 


BACKWARD   GLIMPSES.  101 

ishment,  God  feeds  us  from  the  dish  or  spoon 
that  we  can  best  appreciate,  and  if  the  golden 
bowl  and  spoon  be  presented,  we  cannot 
receive  it  with  due  respect  and  wisdom 
unless  we  have  amicably  outgrown  our  silver 
condition  of  life.  We,  in  our  human  nature, 
are  vast  and  incomprehensible.  We  are  a 
well-spring  of  sufficient  import  and  reliability 
of  compact,  that  we  harmonize  throughout  the 
grandeur  of  the  one  eternal  whole.  We  are 
children  to-day;  to-morrow  finds  us  old  in  ex- 
perience, and  each  successive  day  adds  a  loop 
of  wisdom  to  our  brow  of  God  capacity  of 
movement.  If  we  found  God  in  the  start  of 
life,  our  wheel  of  motion  would  soon  cease 
and  a  fog  of  utter  darkness  would  shut  around 
us  and  earth  become  a  pigment  field  of  the 
smallest  possible  account.  God  has  dwelt  in 
the  heavens  and  in  the  earth  all  the  days  of 
Shem,  Ham  and  Japheth,  which  signifies  all 
the  days  of  love,  light  and  knowledge,  and 
which  also  signifies  the  ambulance  team  in 
which  God  carries  souls  to  Heaven. 

Pocahontas,  the  Indian  maiden,  of  histor- 
ical keepsake ,  was  brave  and  true.  Love  to 
her  was  sacrifice — was  self-immolation,  and 
there  is  no  truth  in  love  unless  we  give  from 
the  full  fountain  of  our  being  and  ask  no  re- 


102  BACKWARD   GLIMPSES. 

turn  of  the  gem  star  sent  from  the  ark  of  safety. 
There  is  no  selfishness  in  love,  no  wish  to 
bind  the  brow  of  another  with  any  thorn  rose 
taken  from  the  coronet  of  your  own  heart 
struggles.  We  would  have  every  thorn 
removed  from  the  path  of  those  we  love. 
"We  would  ever  spread  their  bread  of  life  with 
honey  dew  taken  from  the  soul  of  our  best 
living.  Oh,  God,  that  princely  ray  charm  is 
gilded  with  the  true  essence  of  Thy  whole 
soul  work.  Marriage  by  the  earthly  law,  is 
thought  by  Earth's  children  the  highest  type 
of  love  intercourse ;  but  there  is  a  love  in  the 
spheres  of  immortal  life,  where  complete 
blending  of  two  or  more  souls  makes  a  figure 
show  of  love  power,  that  earth  can  never 
attain  to,  until  perfect  liberty  has  individual- 
ized all  minds  to  act  in  concert  from  the 
highest  stand-point  of  Spiritual  light.  There 
will  be  many  a  wreck  on  the  sand  shores  of 
Time,  before  truth  around  the  marriage  altar 
can  embrace  the  free  social  intercourse  and 
fellowship  necessary  for  the  entwinement  of 
the  earthly  and  Spiritual  wrath  of  love. 
Marriage,  in  its  true  significance  of  purposed 
power,  is  God's  great  vehicle  of  use;  the  mill 
in  which  the  Gods  grind  slowly  the  pure  and 
impure  motive  powers  of  individuality;  a  liar- 


BACKWAED   GLIMPSES.  103 

nessed  compact  between  man  and  woman  to 
amalgamate  and  form  a  character  of  living 
principles  that  eternity  can  claim  from  the 
hand  of  Time.  God's  power  is  in  activity  in 
His  sledge-hammer  use  of  all  the  segregate 
and  aggregate  parcels  or  particles  that  are 
only  brought  together  by  the  force  law  in 
Nature,  resulting  from  God's  force  law  of  love. 
God,  the  full-fledged  spirit  power,  can  never 
at  a  present  glance  accumilate  and  scatter  all 
wisdom  to  the  understanding  of  His  children. 
It  must  be  growth  and  development  of  soul 
that  brings  the  great  arc  of  God's  power  to 
the  recognition  of  the  gradual  unfoldment  of 
mind  capacity.  The  development  or  unfold- 
ing of  God's  mysterious  workshop,  causes  the 
mind  to  wonder  at  its  past  illiberal  and  fan- 
atic teachings  and  believings,  and  the  farther 
we  get  in  knowledge  the  more  ignorant  we 
seemingly  appear.  I  used  to  think  in  child- 
hood, and,  in  fact,  maturer  years  found  me  of 
something  of  the  same  opinion,  that  God  was 
a  being  of  disposition,  liberal  to  those  whom 
he  desired  to  love,  and  to  those  in  disfavor, 
He  would  show  the  tricky  side  of  His  nature- 
I  am  thankful  that  years  have  brought  me 
away  from  so  pent  a  God,  and  that  every 
cycle  of  Time's  movement  gives  God  more  ex- 


OF  THB 

UNIVERSITY 


104  BACKWARD   GLIMPSES. 

pansion  force  and  more  symetry  and  beauty 
in  expression.  The  days  of  wonder  will  never 
cease,  because  the  law  of  ignorance  is  as  much 
a  fixed  law,  as  the  law  of  wisdom ;  and  to  those 
under  the  law  of  ignorance,  God  is  a  great 
mystery  that  can  never  be  understood,  because 
the  purposes  to  have  His  power  kept  from 
the  knowledge  of  man. 


CHAPTEE  XIX. 

WILL  now  take  my  readers  along 
the  Fifth  shore  of  Progress,  reaching 
back  with  memory  to  recount  a  tale  of 
interest  that  may  be  of  service  to  the  world 
of  reading  minds.  The  fifth  stage  of  experi- 
ence to  me,  at  times,  fills  me  with  sore  regret. 
I  desired  to  become  a  lawyer;  to  understand 
justice  in  its  broadest  sense;  to  understand 
all  the  hooks  and  crooks  of  policy,  and  to  un- 
derstand why  the  Devil  enters  the  lawyer's 
field  of  labor,  with  so  much  skill  and  right  of 
bearing.  I  sought  to  know  these  things  to 
become  a  sifting  machine  on  the  legal  course 
track  of  Time.  After  I  had  deliberately 
weighed,  all  the  difficulties,  and  surmounted 
them,  as  I  thought,  I  betook  myself  to  one  of 
the  most  classical  lawyers  that  Summerside 
afforded.  He  was  old  in  experience ,  having 
gone  through  with  all  the  grades  of  dissect- 
ing; knew  just  where  to  commence  his  work 
every  time,  and  where  to  leave  off;  if  the 
bladder  pouch  of  the  law  victim  was  averse 


106  BACKWARD   GLIMPSES. 

to  another  squeeze  from  the  fingers  of  avari- 
cious law  hunters.  I  stated  my  desire  to  this 
man  of  powerful  intellect :  told  him  that  in  no 
way  did  I  wish  to  give  up  the  clergy;  but  I 
thought  my  work  would  be  broader  if  I  could 
have  a  taste  of  the  pie,  whose  filling  was  in- 
justice, seasoned  by  the  money-God,  Whoever 
has  a  seat  in  the  court-rooms  of  legal - 
zed  policy.  This  man,  whose  whole  time 
and  life  had  been  given  to  his  work,  under- 
stood, of  course ,  that  I  must  be  very  ignorant 
of  the  work  I  was  about  to  enter  into.  And 
he  said  to  me:  "  I  fear,  my  friend,  you  have 
not  counted  the  cost,  not  thought  how  much 
of  suffering  you  will  entail  upon  yourself,  and 
how  much  unpleasantness  of  feeling  will  always 
be  about  you  if  you  mix  up  religion  with  these 
knotty  law  questions,  which  seem  as  widely 
apart  as  the  northern  and  southern  poles  of  the 
equator."  ' '  But,"  said  I  to  my  friend,  "how  is 
religion  to  benefit  us  if  not  taken  into  the 
business  walks  of  life ;  how  serve  us  if  not  laid 
as  a  corner-stone  beside  our  every  act?"  This 
man  of  massive  brow,  full  of  strength  and 
will,  said  to  me:  "  What  you  say  appears  true 
and  right;  but  is  not  talk  handier  than  prac- 
tice, and  is  it  not  more  fashionable  and  easier 
of  control?"  I  was  somewhat  shocked  at  the 


BACKWARD  GLIMPSES.  107 

lack  of  the  true  balance-wheel  in  the  man's 
character,  and  I  thought  to  myself,  I  shall 
never  imbibe  those  ideas.  I  have  come  here 
to  this  man  to  learn;  therefore,  I  must  learn 
his  way,  but  shun  the  contagion  of  error  while 
I  walk  through  its  pools  to  become  as  a  bea- 
con-star guiding  manhood  away  from  the  sand 
bars  that  impede  the  spirit's  growth.  I  soon 
learned  that  my  work  was  broader  than  I  had 
anticipated;  that  it  is  not  so  easy  to  be  in 
daily  contact  and  in  daily  communication 
with  the  evil  sides  of  life  and  not  receive 
some  portion  of  the  moral  effluvia  that  be- 
smears the  soul  life  of  a  wrong-doer.  Well, 
I  labored  in  the  law  business  until  I  grew  weary 
of  the  hashing  and  bickering.  The  lies  told 
without  compunction  of  spirit,  and  the  lies 
told  with  the  quiver  attachment  of  a  secret 
quiltiness,  showing  a  mind  ill  at  ease,  with  sin 
resting  beside  its  daily  course  of  labor,  I 
thought,  as  I  had  wandered  so  far  away  from 
earth,  had  passed  through  so  many  changes 
and  arrived  at  the  Fifth  Seat  of  Progress, 
that  the  legal  profession  must  have  attained 
some  eminence  in  purity  of  expression  and 
in  its  purposes  to  deal  honestly  and  candidly 
by  all  men.  And  as  women  had  then  uttered 
no  complaint,  it  must  have  been  taken  for  grant- 


108  BACKWARD   GLIMPSES. 

ed  that  they  were  fully  satisfied  with  all  the  law 
arrangements,  and  only  man  was  the  sufferer 
through  the  intrigue  and  falsity  of  deal  that 
interlaces  the  whole  government  of  law  en- 
forced authority.  I  shall  thank  God  or  the 
holy  spirit  of  right  when  no  law  enactment 
or  law  enforcement  be  necessary,  but  the  one 
voice  speaking  from  soul  to  soul,  saying: 
' '  Bury  ye  the  hatchet,  for  I  am  greater  than 
the  law  of  men;  I  am  principle;  the  voice  of 
God  speaking  from  the  hilltops  of  mount 
Sinai,  that  the  whole  world  or  worlds  hearing 
the  sound  of  wisdom  may  be  guided  into  the 
right  channel  of  duty." 

To  say  that  law  can  not  prosper  with  me, 
or  I  did  not  succumb  to  its  teachings  of  error, 
would,  of  course,  make  me  non-serviceable  in 
and  about  sunnyside.  I  found  that  I  was 
very  much  hampered,  because  so  few  found 
religion  pleasant  in  business  affairs;  and  I  had 
no  way  then  of  reaching  back  to  earth  with 
my  gleanings,  for  no  passage  had  been  made 
of  sufficient  width  that  I  could  traverse  with 
any  benefit  to  myself  or  hope  of  recognition 
by  the  world  I  had  left.  I  have  since  thought 
that  in  doing  a  broad  evangelical  work,  that 
persistency  was  a  necessary  qualification,  and 
we  have  no  right  to  shrink  from  a  duty,  for 


BACKWAKD   GLIMPSES.  109 

God's  whole  plan  of  universal  workmanship 
is  based  on  love  and  duty,  and  can  we,  the 
children  of  the  great  love  principle,  fail  io  do 
as  the  all  spirit  of  right  is  ever  admonishing 
us  to  do. 

The  fifth  degree  of  advancement  has  many 
a  rainbow  hue  of  merit.  It  is  peopled  with 
some  of  the  greatest  minds  that  have  ever 
lived,  that  desire  repose  and  tranauility  of 
soul.  I  there  met  many  of  the  ancient  phil- 
osophers who  had  chosen  their  retirement 
bowers  in  the  rosy  atmosphere  of  Sunnyside. 
I  found  that  the  principle  study  with  those 
olden  fanciests  was  the  right  and  proper  use 
of  the  true  key  of  power — a  branch  of  study 
that  would  be  well  for  Earth  to  examine. 
The  majority  of  the  inhabitants  of  Sunny- 
side  live  in  groups,  or  a  classified  number 
join  interests  and  labor  for  the  establishment 
of  standard  elements  to  help  God's  plan  of 
glory  safe  and  sound  beyond  cavil  or  daring 
of  skill  to  demolish.  Freedom  has  a  broad 
Kcense  in  and  about  Sunnyside.  No  fingers 
of  discontent  meddle  in  its  baptismal  font 
that  carries  the  liquid  foam  of  peace.  Thomas 
Carlysle  said  to  me:  "Bunyan,  is  not  life 
here  a  glorious  crown  of  enjoyment;  a  mid- 
summer's day  of  brilliancy  and  power,  whose 


110  BACKWAED   GLIMPSES. 

hazy  atmosphere  fills  the  soul  with  soft  repose. 
I  would  forever  linger  around  this  bath  of 
peace,  forever  swell  the  praises  of  Sunnyside, 
and  forever  reach  to  Earth,  from  this,   my 
present  corner  of  enjoyment."      I  could  not 
prosper  as  a  lawyer.     I  could  not  subscribe 
to  so  much  network  to  get  at  a  truth  that  was 
plain  until  it  was   covered  up.     Law  in  the 
spheres  of  spiritual  growth  is  not  contamin- 
ated by  any  influx  of  sordid  motives ;  but  the 
layer  or  basis  has  so  long  been  charged  with 
the  electic  currents  shot  from  the  fingers  of 
old  moneybags  that  time  is  required  to  fur- 
nish the  proper  material  for  amalgamation. 
What  comes  to  us  intuitively  should  be  lis- 
tened to  and  heeded  as  a  voice  speaking  to  our 
conscience  monitor  of  strength.     If  we  would 
so  educate  ourselves  we  might  always  hold 
converse  with  our  speaking  guide  within,  and 
not  call  on  the  outside  world,  that  can  in  no 
way  judge  for  us,  simply  because  our  experi- 
ences are  not  for  others  to  meddle  with,  and 
we  have  no  right  to  accept  another  person's 
favor  or  disfavor  when  sitting  in  judgment 
over  our  acts.     It  is  this  dependency  on  other 
people's  criticisms  that  waylays  us  in   our 
growth  as  individualities,  and  makes  us  pau  - 
per--  in  the  distinguishment  of  good  and  evil. 


BACKWARD   GLIMPSES.  Ill 

St.  Paul  has  said  that  "evil  be  to  him  that 
evil  thinks."  In  that  case,  who  has  a  right 
to  think  for  another;  who  a  right  to  say,  do 
ye  so  and  so,  for  this  way  serves  me,  and  of 
course  you  can  be  guided  by  the  same  voice 
that  I  can.  Now  this  giving  up  our  own 
anchor  or  monitor  of  safety,  and  trying  to  be 
served  from  another's  stand-point  of  opera- 
tion is  what  kills  our  influence  and  makes  us 
dependent,  on  the  life  currents  of  another 
person's  resources.  Life  is  always  aggressive ; 
a  power  within  its  own  linkings  of  meritori- 
ous attachment.  And  if  we  abide  by 
another's  standard  poise  of  accumulation,  we 
have  sunk  our  own  life-boat  into  the  Dead 
Sea  from  which  no  independent  traveler  ever 
returns.  Therefore,  it  is  well  for  us  to  sub- 
scribe to  individuality,  well  for  us  to  think 
and  abide  by  the  thought,  and  that  by  and 
through  God  ordination  of  holy  means  and 
ways,  we  are  called  as  a  specialty  to  gather 
for  our  own  lamp  burning,  and  if  we  can 
assist  another  advantageously  to  themselves, 
we  are  performing  a  double  service,  and 
building  a  platform  of  strength  and  encour- 
agement for  many  a  weary  soul  to  traverse  at 
will.  Life  is  neither  a  holiday  or  a  season  of 
penance,  but  chippings  from  both  sides  of  its 


112  BACKWARD   GLIMPSES. 

shaded   curtain   grace   the    measure  of    its 
march. 


U.NTVEBS 


CHAPTER  XX. 

life  signifies  an  eternity  of 
individuality  ;  a  linking  to  the  wheel  of 
God  purpose  ;  a  master  masonship  with 
the  full  degrees  in  attendance.  I  would  ask 
now  from  my  seventh  degree  of  glory,  why 
life  is  so  tampered  with,  why  thistles  grow 
where  roses  should  bloom  perpetual,  why 
sorrow  shades  the  brow,  when  hope  should 
be  the  cherub  boy  to  face  all  the  shades  of 
discontent  ;  and  marvel  at  nothing  so  much 
as  a  gloom  crested  brow  of  a  grumbler. 
We  often  plant  thorns,  expecting  to  reap  a 
harvest  of  flowers.  God,  the  Father  Creator, 
the  soul  principle  and  living  germ  in  all  natu- 
ral outbreak,  has  not  always*  pressed  the 
couch  of  ease.  For,  over  angry  billows  and 
rough,  stupendous  ways  has  God  climbed  by 
force  of  will  ;  and  we  are  only  the  lesser  gods, 
who  will  ever  revolve  around  the  King  orbit 
of  all  power.  We  are  the  fractional  part,  or 
parts  of  the  one  soul  system,  that  is  por- 
trayed in  the  tiny  shell ;  and  in  everything, 


114:  BACKWARD  GLIMPSES. 

both  great  and  small.  Do  we  feel  God's  sys- 
tem, love,  mercy,  and  of  tried  goodness  ? 
That  should  leave  no  doubt  in  our  minds  of 
the  ultimate  success  of  good  over  evil.  Who- 
soever strives  to  obtain  wisdom  will  ever  find 
God  ready  and  willing  to  turn  the  leaves  for 
their  reading. 

God  moves  in  a  mysterious  way  His  wis- 
dom to  proclaim  ;  and  we  are  the  mind  re- 
cipients that  go  even  handed  with  God,  and 
should  proclaim  our  knowledge  and  truth  as 
we  receive  it.  I  do  not  mean,  with  a  loud 
voice,  and  braggadocia  air  of  one  having 
much  learning,  and  brain  to  display  it,  but  in 
a  quiet  and  unobstrusive  manner  that  carries 
a  conviction  of  its  reliability  to  us.  We  are 
all  sowers  and  reapers  ;  and  we  should  be 
mindful  of  the  seed  we  plant,  lest  our  gather- 
ings be  unprofitable  and  easy  of  destruction. 
God  is  the  Father  side  of  life,  the  structured 
plan  to  our  upright  figure-head,  the  marshal- 
ing of  material  river  streams  of  action  to  be 
laid  by  the  mother  side  of  wisdom,  which  is 
the  open  bud  of  negative  condition.  God  is 
positive,  the  Father  stream  that  waters  the 
tree  of  knowledge  standing  in  his  garden  of 
reproduction.  Adam  and  Eve  are  a  fair 
illustration  of  God  and  wisdom,  the  father 


BACKWKAD   GLIMPSES.  115 

and  mother  side  of  all  actual  demonstrative 
being.  God  pulls  the  wire  and  wisdom,  the 
intuitive  heedist  jogs  evenly  along,  and  a 
branching  system  is  acted  upon,  when  first 
principles  have  gained  full  control.  There  is 
no  complication  in  the  God  nature  of  work- 
manship, the  understanding  compact,  no 
illicit  beverage  is  ever  drunk  by  the  love 
pool  of  wisdom  ;  no  freak  of  discontent  mars 
the  surface  of  the  marriage  vow  made  at  the 
altar  of  God,  matter  and  wisdom  spirit  or  the 
God  principle  of  all  holy  interior  law.  If 
man  and  woman  should  glean  a  lesson  from 
nature's  compact  of  affinity,  there  would  be 
no  tearing  assunder  of  the  marriage  bonds, 
binding  the  souls  of  men  and  women.  Marriage 
by  law  is  marriage  by  proxy,  and  if  the  streams 
of  outward  compact  and  the  inner  sources 
of  reliability  mingle  and  harmonize  to  a  per- 
fect adaptability,  then  is  a  proxy  marriage 
one  of  truth  binding  principles,  qf  lasting  vir- 
tue and  peace  ;  but  if,  on  the  other  hand,  mar- 
riage is  stripped  of  its  fibres  of  soul  con- 
geniality, and  is  w6rn  as  a  mantle  of  outside 
show,  a  body  protection  against  the  public 
voice  that  shows  no  charity  for  things  not 
understood,  then  is  the  proxy  voice  in  the 
in  the  marriage  contract,  the  devils  howl  of 


116  BACKWAED   GLIMPSES. 

hatred  against  truth  and  virtue,  around 
the  altar  of  man  and  woman  compact  of 
hallowed  purity  and  peace.  True  marriage 
is  the  death-blow  to  all  social  inharmony  of 
spirit,  and  corruption  of  action.  Love,  pure 
and  true  to  the  natural  instinct  of  magnetic 
forces,  is  the  God  side  of  human  nature, 
working  out  its  glory  of  achievement,  no  third 
voice  is  needed  in  the  binding  ceremony  be- 
tween man  and  woman  unless  they  are  mar- 
rying for  the  world  of  public  opinion  ;  and 
then,  perhaps,  a  form  is  necessary  to  insure 
respectability.  Marriage  is  a  term  signify- 
ing assent  between  two  parties,  to  be  a  law 
of  love  and  consequent  happiness  unto  each 
other  ;  therefore,  if  we  touch  the  rights  of 
the  case,  what  third  party  has  a  right  to  say, 
I  pronounce  you  man  and  wife  in  the  name  of 
any  power,  but  the  love  power  of  unity  ?  The 
law  of  man  that  makes  men  and  women  hus- 
bands and  wives  is  a  necessity  to  those  not 
united  by  the  firm  and  lasting  cord  of  silvery 
love,  that  makes  home  a  paradise  of  earthly 
nestling.  The  law  of  outside  marriage  never 
hurts  when  the  interior  ceremony  has  already 
been  performed  ;  therefore,  I  would  say  to 
those  who  require  the  ritual  of  church  sanc- 
tity, to  make  the  love  noose  better  understood 


BACKWARD  GLMPSES.  117 

by  the  world,  by  all  means  procure  that  stem 
of  satisfaction  ;  it  can  do  no  harm,  but  the 
harm  lies  with  those  who  grasp  the  law  for 
some  selfish  bodily  advancement  in  life,  and, 
thereby,  live  a  curse,  and  also  entail  a  curse 
upon  others.  I  would  like  to  give  the  defini- 
tion of  true  marriage  in  a  little  budget  of 
allegory. 

Suppose  we  take  for  instance  a  shoemaker 
and  his  wife,  who  are  generally  supposed  to 
be  amicably  disposed  towards  each  other,  and 
the  man  finds  that  some  secret  spring  in  his 
wife's  character  has  never  been  touched,  in 
their  enrapport  condition.  The  man  being 
ignorant  of  the  laws  that  govern  the  interior 
make  up  of  individuality,  supposes  that 
with  a  new  pair  of  shoes  that  his  wife  will 
unburden  all  the  secret  avenues  to  her  soul 
and  he  can  walk  freely  therein.  Now,  the 
shoes  may  be  received  with  gratitude,  but 
the  gulf  broadens,  and  no  amount  of  shoeing 
or  clothing,  on  external  principle,  can  make 
plain  the  secret  of  non-understanding.  The 
shoes  seem  a  rough  plaster  to  heal  a  delicate 
wound,  and  we  see  no  truth  in  the  mingling 
of  shoe  leather  and  sentiment.  True  marriage 
is  intuitive  understanding.  Many  wives  there 
are  who  are  shoemakers  around  their  hus- 


118  BACKWARD   GLIMPSES. 

band's  field  of  sentiment,  and  come  no  nearer 
to  the  inner  temple  of  their  true  lives  than 
the  foot  to  the  head.  A  leather  wife  to  a  sen- 
sitive husband  or  a  leather  husband  to  a  sen- 
sitive wife  are  like  the  mingling  of  thistles 
and  roses.  The  rose  is  continually  receiving 
pricks,  while  the  thistle  stands  paramount  in 
its  thistlehood.  The  Greek  slave  was  a  won- 
derful statuesque  of  art,  and  in  its  dead  letter 
of  service  to  the  world  may  be  likened  to  the 
dead  figures  of  speech  in  the  marriage  vows 
between  men  and  women.  Oh  !  ye  of  little 
faith,  when  you  need  anything  but  God's 
holy  word,  spoken  from  the  mouth  of  natural 
affinity,  to  make  two  souls  a  law  of  love  unto 
each  other.  There  is  no  death  to  truthful 
love ;  no  covering  that  can  conceal  its  care 
and  protection.  We  always  know  when  we 
are  loved  ;  there  is  that  still,  small  voice  that 
speaks  in  its  silvery  monotone,  and  our 
awakened  heart  catches  the  chime  of  sym- 
pathy, and  never  more  are  we  alone,  for, 
another  heart  beats  responsive  to  our  own. 
Love  is  a  great  tattler,  for  it  is  continually 
talking  with  its  varied  tongue  of  mischief ; 
and  the  wide  world  is  awake  to  receive  its 
merry  tones  of  comfort  and  of  peace. 


CHAPTER  XXI. 

world  of  spirit  has  ever  favored  me 
with  its  service  of  love  and  protection; 
if  we  will  to  do  right  the  whole  arm  of 
rightful  law  envelopes  our  missioned  soul  of 
duty.  There  is  no  feeling  in  the  spirit  world 
of  progressed  minds,  what  another  will  say, 
if  we  do  thus,  and  so  we  act  from  the  equi- 
librium of  common  sense  to  move  from  our 
own  stand-point  of  observation,  and  if  mis- 
takes are  made,  we  have  that  levy  of  experi- 
ence and  a  chance  of  broadening  our  knowl- 
edge on  some  other  expedient  of  movement. 
There  is  no  superfluous  measures  adopted  to 
guide  us  through  the  channels  of  spiritual 
growth,  all  circulating  forces  of  mind  educated 
ability  act  from  the  standard  hub  of  principle. 
I  do  not  mean  that  instantaneous  change  is 
wrought  in  our  sentiments  and  opinions,  as 
soon  as  we  drop  the  earth  curtain  and  plant  our 
feet  on  spirit  soil,  but  all  preparation  that  we 
have  made  in  the  direction  of  upright,  moral 
and  intellectual  improvement  and  culture,  is 


120  BACKWARD  GLIMPSES. 

a  well-planned  fundament  on  which  to  rest 
our  weary  soul.  The  basis  of  life  is  action, 
therefore  no  death  can  occur,  it  is  an  evolution 
of  life  continually,  a  broadening  of  principle, 
an  influx  of  divine  fervor,  that  our  inheritance, 
and  the  inheritance  of  all  the  natural  orbits 
of  individuality  may  be  worthy  of  the  great 
mind  or  will  force  of  Deity.  God  never  tarn, 
pers  with  the  crildren  of  men,  no  life  is  hung 
out  for  a  show,  there  is  a  background  princi- 
ple to  every  current  movement  of  God  en- 
forced law.  I  live  to-day  John  Bunyan.  I 
retain  a  memory  of  my  gradual  unfoldment, 
until  now,  of  course  there  are  incidental  cir- 
cumstances connected  with  my  past  life,  that 
I  might  not  now  be  able  to  recall,  but  the 
great  woof  of  my  existence  is  a  plain  and 
real  fact.  I  have  no  reason  to  suppose  that 
God  will  ever  drop  me  out  of  my  orbit  of  life. 
I  expect  to  some  day  mingle  in  the  machinery 
house  of  world  constructing,  but  it  will  be 
when  my  mind  can  comprehend  the  idea  of 
first  motion  or  the  principles  that  unite  all  the 
points  of  natural  law.  It  may  seem  strange 
to  the  people  of  world  life  that  I  can  have  so 
much  assurance  as  to  suppose  that  I  am  to 
some  day  mingle  my  forces  with  the  great 
heart  purpose  of  Deity,  but  it  is,  nevertheless,  a 


BACKWAED   GLIMPSES.  121 

fixed  fact  in  the  spiral  point  of  spiritual  law  ra- 
diates that  individuality  to  the  focus  of  God 
power,  there  is  no  other  way  of  meeting  with 
reason  the  issue  of  mind  unfoldment.  God's 
cause  is  a  prosperous  one,  and  the  united  effort 
of  mind  power,  keeps  the  structured  system  safe 
in  hands  of  Deific  principle.  The  world  is 
based  on  love  and  will,  one  cannot  exist  without 
the  other,  they  are  the  opposite  forces  that  wear 
the  wedding  ring  of  compact.  Marriage 
is  not  confined  to  man  and  woman,  the  beasts 
of  the  field,  or  the  birds  of  the  air,  but  the 
spirit  of  unity  and  reproduction,  or.  the  spirit 
of  love  and  marriage  is  the  natural  friction 
press,  where  God  makes  matter  to  form 
worlds  and  worlds,  to  form  systems  of  worlds 
that  stretch  into  the  infinitude  of  space.  It 
is  loves  various  moods  that  stamps  the  differ- 
ences in  objective  life.  Will  takes  love  in  all 
her  varied  costumes  of  appearance,  and  the  pet- 
ting process  or  the  mingling  of  hydrogen 
with  the  electrogen,  causes  the  affinity  from 
which  is  produced  the  shadings  aud  shapings 
of  all  life.  Love  is  ever  true  to  her  compact 
with  will,  if  will  is  weak.  Love  is  necessar- 
ily prone  to  easiness  and  the  production  from 
two  indolent  sources  of  action  is  weak  and 
vacilliating.  You  can  only  coax  love  with  will. 
6 


122  BACKWARD  GLIMPSES. 

The  power  may  be  softened  to  the  gilded 
cooing  of  a  warbler  bird,  and  still  be  all- 
sufficient  in  its  power  and  strength  to  sop  up 
the  cozy  nrestler,  love.  What  but  the  one 
vast  mind  of  a  holy  harmonions  God,  or  the 
holy  harmony  of  first  principles  could  so 
mind  everything  to  the  two  focuses  of  inlaid 
gem  work,  that  their  blending  could  produce 
or  outstamp  the  great  variety  field  of  God 
planning.  None  but  God  can  do  God's  work. 
The  mind  of  man  can  imitate  and  deduce 
from  God's  system  the  way  of  instituting 
compact  between  the  things  of  God  produc- 
tion, and  that  power  in  man  to  imitate  God, 
shows  that  when  the  basis  points  of  God  act- 
ing are  fully  understood,  man  will  join  hands 
with  his  creator,  even  though  the  travel  to 
the  summit  of  God  speculative  theory.  Is  it 
not  worthy  the  effort  of  man  and  woman,  to 
build  to  the  temple  of  Godly  spirit  of  under- 
standing. I  am  drifting  about  earth,  that  earth 
may  know  that  there  is  a  united  effort  on  the 
part  of  angel  wisdom  to  show  the  life  outside 
of  time,  or  to  show  the  life  of  time  stretches 
to  the  eternal  shores  of  godly  building  and 
perfecting.  The  noose  of  love  is  ever  slipped 
about  my  heart,  and  I  can  work  in  all  legiti- 
mate fields  that  need  the  spicy  gems  of  spirit 


BACKWARD   GLIMPSES.  123 

communion.  The  beverage  of  peace  and  love 
that  is  being  given  to  the  nineteenth  century 
should  brace  all  receptive  hearts,  and  make 
the  earth  life,  roseate  and  bright  with  the 
spirit  of  duties  well  performed.  We,  in 
spirit  life,  use  the  media  assigned  to  us  in 
the  way  best  suiting  our  purposes  of  acting 
for  the  enlightenment  of  humanity.  It  is  no 
easy  work  on  the  part  of  a  progressed  spirit 
to  labor  physicologically  with  a  mind  that  is 
scarcely  in  corresponding  order,  and  I  would 
say  that  it  is  no  pleasant  labor  for  a  medium 
to  be  drafted  of  strength  and  individuality 
necessary  to  subject  themselves  to  a  recep- 
tive condition.  Therefore,  few  are  chosen 
compared  to  the  great  mass  of  people  that 
roam  the  world  to  day,  and  that  few  are 
working  in  the  clear  and  lucid  light  of  revel- 
ation, and  who  shall  say  are  not  chosen  as 
were  the  prophets  of  old  to  carry  the  sub- 
stance of  things  sought  for  to  the  heart  and 
soul  of  needful  humanity,  Andrew  Jackson 
Davis  is  a  Christ  by  right  of  spiritual  gifts. 
His  nature's  divine  relation  is  a  holy  bible  to 
the  century  of  its  date,  and  he  alone  can  tell 
whether  life  has  been  all  bright,  though  he 
has  been  enrapport  with  the  father's  home  of 
glory.  Cora  L.  Y.  Tappan  the  spiritual  law- 


124  BACKWARD   GLIMPSES. 

giver  of  th'e  present  age  is  a  gush  of  womanly 
power  and  love  toned  by  God's  scriphic  band 
of  angel  voices  that  make  glad  her  path  of 
dnty,  and  buoy  up  the  otherwise  troubled 
heart  of  womanly  love  and  mercy,  and  so  I 
might  cite  many  others  who  are  working  to 
establish  truth  and  bring  the  two  worlds  to 
approximate  condition  of  love  lit  harmony. 
Before  another  century  shall  roll  its  car  pro- 
gress along  the  track  course  of  time,  spirit  com- 
munion will  be  the  only  branch  of  commuun- 
ion  on  earth.  Spirit  will  speak  to  spirit. 
Mind  will  commune  with  mind,  and  then 
ehall  earth  become  in  truth  the  spirit  world. 


CHAPTEK  XXII. 

jY  mind  has  been  long  made  up  to  work 
spiritually,  wherever  and  whenever  I 
do  work  to  dig  through  the  soil  of 
outside  monopoly,  and  fit  the  spiritual  tree 
for  the  garden  of  Eden — and  I  hope  the  ser- 
pent of  evil-doing,  may  be  kept  away  from 
man's  Paradise  of  happiness,  by  the  closed 
and  bolted  door  of  justice.  The  reigns  of 
government  have  too  long  been  in  the  hands 
of  the  worldly  spirit  of  monopoly,  all  crush- 
ing powers  need  toning  down  by  the  peck 
hammer  of  love  that  there  may  be  no  outcast 
tributaries  to  flourish  the  spirit  of  misery 
and  discontent.  The  world  of  human  nature 
bears  its  high  cultured  patches  of  mind  ele- 
vation, and  its  waste  corners,  that  afford  no 
beauty  or  strength  around  the  fields  of  intel- 
lectual culture  and  advancement.  Therefore 
there  is  a  broad  duty  on  the  part  of  intellec- 
tuallity,  to  furnish  sources  of  restoration  to 
the  weakened  functions  of  mind  being.  The 
wild  Indian  is  susceptible  of  improvement, 


126  BACKWARD   GLIMPSES. 

susceptible  to  the  winning  power  of  love  and 
kindness,  their  warwhoops  may  become  soft- 
ened and  the  tones  of  peircing  strength  and 
power,  bear  less  hatred  to  the  organs  of  feel- 
ing and  sound.  The  world  will  always  need 
the  evangelical  spirit  of  love  to  be  thrown 
around  some  lone  hunter  for  mercy  and  puri- 
fication. We,  in  spirit  life,  work  more  for 
the  general  whole,  than  earth  has  any  idea 
of;  we  search  out  the  places  where  seed  will 
sprout  to  fill  the  general  granery  of  human 
knowledge.  He  or  she  who  thinks  the  spirit 
life  is  one  of  inaction,  will  find  how  wide  was 
their  mistake,  and  how  much  the  Spirit  can 
find  to  do  when  not  possessing  the  body  house 
of  clay.  The  world  is  filled  with  the  dry  bones 
of  body  service,  when  the  right  spirit  prevails 
on  earth  there  will  be  one  broad  community 
system,  and  its  groupings  will  be  types  of  the 
family  altars  of  love  in  spirit  realms.  I  see 
a  disposition  creeping  around  the  heart  and 
brain  of  some  noble  minds  of  earth,  to  start 
out  and  see  what  can  be  done  towards  har- 
monizing a  plan  to  act  on,  and  in  case  the 
movement  be  a  success,  and  meet  with  the 
spirit  of  acquiescence. 

It  wants  energetic   movers  and   planners; 
men  and  women  who  are  willing  to  go  outside 


BACKWAKD   GLIMPSES.  127 

of  self  and  labor  for  poverty  and  for  crime, 
who  are  willing  to  give  up  their  portion  to 
make  brighter  and  happier  the  condition  of 
another.  Suppose  that  through  our  gifts  for 
the  general  good  we  become  better  acquaint- 
ed with  the  spirit  of  self-sacrifice,  is  not  that 
a  beautiful  gem  to  be  set  in  our  crown  of  spir- 
itual elevation  ? 

There  must  be  founders  to  this  new  system 
of  branching  life,  and  a  starting  point  once 
gained,  it  may  become  a  broad  and  inductive 
school  of  general  lifehood.  When  a  change 
in  the  social  affairs  of  a  community,  or  a  na- 
tionality of  interests  is  to  be  dealt  with;  we 
in  spirit  life  harmonize  to  the  best  of  our 
ability,  and  shape  our  course  of  action  for 
the  general  welfare  of  the  systemed  whole. 
Life  is  a  beverage  that  is  not  easily  drank, 
and  we  take  so  many  other  lives  to  our  foun- 
tain of  accumilation,  that  it  can  hardly  be 
said  with  truth,  that  we  live  our  own  lives; 
we  adhere  to  some  and  mingle  our  shades  of 
thought  together,  and  with  others  we  may 
never  have  a  wish  in  common,  and  so  our 
lives  go  on,  on  and  forever,  if  I  may  be  allow- 
ed the  expression  of  forever.  Time  is  the 
baby -patch  of  experience ;  we  learn  to  creep — 
to  walk — to  say  our  A  B  C — our  catechism,  and 


128  BACKWABB   GLIMPSES. 

if  spared  here  long  enough  and  receive  the  right 
direction,  we  coin  some  gems  that  are  worthy 
of  being  transplanted  to  a  more  softened  at- 
mosphere of  friendly  feeling  and  intercourse. 
I  well  remember  one  scene  which  may  be 
well  here  to  recall.  I  had  occasion  et  one 
time  of  my  angelhood  of  experience,  and  after 
I  had  passed  my  third  realm  of  growth,  to 
make  a  visit  backwards,  and  my  travels  took 
me  to  the  first  platform  of  spirit  stoppings; 
an  old  gentleman  said  to  me.  "Why,  sir, 
this  new  gush  of  life  seems  more  real  than  the 
past,  and  it  seems  as  I  look  back  ,  I  must 
have  lived  in  shadow  and  the  sunshine  is  just 
breaking  through;  but,  I  regret,"  said  he, 
"that  I  trifled  so  much  with  the  principles 
that  govern  life,  and  only  took  what  time 
could  easily  destroy,  and  therefore  lam  weak 
on  the  basal  shore  of  spirit  life;"  said  he, 
"they  tell  me  here  there  is  a  law  of  com- 
munication with  earth,  but  I  know  not  even 
the  first  rudiments  whereby  I  can  touch  a 
single  cord  of  vibration  ;"  for,  said  he,  ' '  the 
church  bound  every  faculty  of  thought  that  I 
possessed,  "and  I  now  see  that  the  church  doors 
will  not  open  for  my  reception  ;  and  I  must 
now  try  the  broad  church  of  soul  enlighten- 
ment, and  find  a  God  that  never  existed  in 


BACKWARD   GLIMPSES.  129 

the  church  of  time. "  And  so  I  left  my  friend, 
knowing  that  he  will  surely  find  the  God  he 
seeks.  The  time  has  been  when  I  would  have 
visited  earth,  and  rapped  for  admittance  on 
doors  that  were  forever  closed  against  me; 
but  I  never  believed  in  frightening  people  to 
a  subject  that  were  better  gained  through 
study  and  a  care  to  find  the  truth,  but  other 
spirits  have  thought  differently  and  would  be 
recognized  though  fear,  pride  or  indifference 
stood  at  the  portals  of  common  sense.  And 
so  all  phases  of  spirit  power  and  ability 
that  we  now  see  have  found  their  way  to 
Earth.  But  the  future  holds  its  own  council, 
else  I  might  predict  or  make  the  assertion 
that  there  are  many  things  that  will  soon  be 
available  to  the  children  of  time,  that  must 
open  the  hearts  and  minds  of  seekers  and 
non-seekers  after  spiritual  props  of  comfort  to 
garnish  the  bread  and  butter  side  of  life.  I 
have  no  faith  in  a  language  that  is  only  a 
mouth  utterance  of  sound,  there  must  be  the 
true  ring  of  soul  motive  to  make  it  worthy 
the  stringing  of  words  to  convey  ideas  from 
one  mind  to  another.  Language  is  the  es- 
sence or  the  aroma  that  feeds  the  soul  of 
individuality  and  can  never  be  perfected  un- 
til man  is  perfected  in  God.  I  could  have 


130  BACKWARD   GLIMPSES. 

given  this  work  in  a  different  wording 
or  metre  of  language,  but  the  medium 
through  which  I  labor  would  have  worked  to 
great  disadvantage  and  earth  has  not  grown 
to  the  comprehension  of  the  language  in  the 
seventh  sphere,  therefore,  it  is  best  to  feed 
people  with  the  spoon  that  will,  in  some  way 
fit  the  mouth.  I  expect  soon  to  be  able 
to  give  lessons  in  the  flower  language  as 
it  is  called,  nothing  exceeds  the  beauty  of 
its  utterance,  or  the  drifting  melody  that  fills 
the  soul  of  the  giver  and  receiver  of  sounds 
that  are  as  sweetly  scented  as  the  air  from 
off  a  garden  patch  of  heliotrope.  I  have 
never  yet  seen  the  perfection  of  flowers, 
never  yet  caught  the  height  of  their  fragrant 
diffusion.  I  have  seen  the  roses  in  my 
travels  that  were  resplendant  with  beauty  and 
meaning.  The  rose  in  the  spirit  world  ac- 
cording to  its  shadings  is  a  typical  illustration 
of  the  progressive  character  of  men  and  wo- 
men. A  boquet  of  purely  white  roses  im- 
plies to  the  receiver,  you  have  drifted  through 
adversity,  have  shaken  hands  with  poverty, 
and  have  breasted  the  white  waves  of  scorn, 
all  in  duty  to  truth  and  God  the  conscience 
monitor  to  your  unselfish  life.  Therefore, 
thou  art  pure  as  these  white  lipped  messages 


BACKWARD   GLIMPSES.  131 

of  love  are  pure,  and  Christ  is  waiting  in  the 
reception  room  of  peace  and  fellowship.  Go 
thou  in  and  receive  the  bath  of  redemption. 
A  boquet  of  red  roses,  says  you  have  dashed 
my  hopes;  although  your  gildings  were  fine 
I  see  that  pride  was  the  body  guard  that  ever 
surrounded  your  life,  and  I  fear  to  link  my 
fate  with  yours,  lest  in  adverse  hours  you 
trample  your  fate  in  the  dust.  With  regard 
to  the  growing  or  cultivation  of  flowers 
in  the  spirit  world  much  has  been  said  and 
also  in  regard  to  vegetation  of  any  kind  and 
character.  The  query  has  been,  is  it  real, 
is  it  tangible  to  sense,  and  do  we  eat  and 
drink  and  find  ways  and  means  to  support  all 
of  our  life  principles  as  when  earth  claimed 
the  rotundity  of  our  physical  presence? 
Vegetation  in  the  Spirit  world,  is  produced 
or  I  might  say  is  an  inherent  principle  that  is 
thrown  out  from  the  system  of  earth  and  is 
perfected  as  man  is  perfected,  and  that  is  by 
being  cultured.  All  labor  in  spirit  life  is 
systematized  or  thrown  on  to  a  base  of  even 
and  progressive  balance  wheels  of  motion. 
To  ask  if  we  eat  is  to  ask  if  we  live,  since 
life  cannot  be  sustained  without  a  gift  from 
its  fountain  of  resources.  We  partake  of 
refreshments  as  earth's  children  do,  and  in 


132  BACKWARD   GLIMPSES. 

very  like  the  same  manner,  only  we  have  pro- 
gressive forms  to  observe,  and  food  that  has 
become  etherealized  as  we  have  become  more 
ethereal.  All  species  in  the  vegetable  king- 
dom and  all  the  floral  kingdom  is  here  awake 
to  a  brilliant  and  useful  growth.  Flowers 
have  been  picked  by  spirits  as  a  gift  to  an 
earth  friend,  and  in  making  the  journey  to 
earth  the  flowers  would  take  on  the  earth  con- 
dition, by  coming  en  rap'po  with  the  natural 
germinal  world.  But  the  substance  that  is  so 
deduced  is  very  fleeting,  and  hence  the  real 
flowers  that  are  of  ttimes  given  seem  like  haunt- 
ing shadows  of  the  imagination.  Desdemona 
has  immortalized  the  rose  by  giving  it  the 
significance  of  lasting  virtues  and  attaching 
to  it  honor  and  principle.  Flowers  are 
nature's  boon  of  poesy.  The  speaking  sata- 
lites  that  crown  the  face  of  earth  with  sub- 
limity and  lasting  beauty.  Flowers  have  a 
harmonizing  influence  over  the  fitful  and  flashy 
natures  of  men,  women  and  children.  They 
seem  to  say  be  calm  as  I  am  calm,  and  take 
your  beauty  therefrom.  There  is  a  lesson  in 
every  flower,  a  proverb  in  every  blade  of  grass. 
They  all  tell  us  that  life  is  and  ever  will  be,  that 
changes  come,  decay  takes  place,  and  we  are 
in  the  lifeboat  of  progressive  earnings. 


CHAPTEE  XXIII. 

IIFE  is  a  school,  and  experience  the  law- 
ful teacher.     We  only  gain  one  lesson 

'well,  and  with  advantage  to  one  soul- 
elevation,  when  experience  lifts  the  curtain 
to  earth's  varied  scenery.  One  course  track 
may  be  sufficient  to  some,  whose  natures  are 
pent  up  and  narrowed  down  to  the  force-bent 
of  one  idea,  but  such  natures  are  rare  in  this 
time  of  world-growth  and  elongated  prin- 
ciples of  working  merit.  God  no  more  says, 
if  he  ever  did  say  it,  Thus  far  shalt  thou  go, 
and  no  farther;  for  the  mandate  now  is,  Strive 
to  perfect  yourselves  in  all  the  branches  of 
education  that  I  hold  before  thee,  for  I  am 
the  living  God,  grown  from  the  branching 
tree  of  experience,  and  I  would  have  all  lesser 
Gods  travel  in  the  footsteps  of  the  Greater; 
that  Heaven  may  present  a  breast-plate  of 
starry  minds  that  will  accord  in  one  har- 
monious strain  of  outgrowth.  The  world  is 
afloat  to-day,  and  minds  are  the  sea-gulls  that 
flutter  around  the  great  banquet  of  knowl- 
edge, spread  for  the  generalissimo  of  all  man- 


134  BACKWARD   GLIMPSES. 

kind,  and  the  covered  dishes  are  only  await- 
ing the  keenness  of  appetite  to  remove.  God 
is  supernal,  and  we  also  have  a  life  lease  of 
perpetual  growth,  and  hence  prosperity. 
Death  never  finds  us  idle,  although  our 
physical  hands  be  tied,  our  spirit  fingers 
untie  the  knotty  cords  that  bound  us,  and  we 
go  free  to  another  platform  of  honest  labor. 
There  are  few  people  in  the  world  to-day  that 
will  realize  or  comprehend  my  present  exist- 
ence, so  long  has  earth  looked  upon  me  as 
having  passed  beyond  any  remembrance  of 
past  lifehood;  but  some  will  reach  to  me  a 
heart  and  mind  of  belief,  and  to  such,  John 
Bunyan  is  still  an  individual  keepsake  of 
godly  power  and  purpose ;  still  willing  to  strive 
for  truth;  still  willing  to  give  for  the  glory 
and  upbuilding  of  man.  Not  very  long  since, 
I  had  a  vision,  which  I  will  here  relate,  as  it 
seems  appropriate  in  this  opening  valve  of 
Backward  Glimpses.  I  had  been  entertain- 
ing some  of  my  most  classical  friends,  one 
leisure  day.  We  were  all  buoyant  and  happy, 
feeling  at  ease  with  conscience,  and  for  the 
sake  of  diversion  and  instruction  we  were 
asking  each  other  knotty  and  intricate  ques- 
tions. General  Wool  of  Revolutionary  an- 
tiqr-'y,  said  to  me,  Bunyan,  tell  me  God's 


BACKWABD  GLIMPSES.  135 

object  and  purpose  in  human  life.  I  sat  a 
a  moment  in  deep  thought.  I  made  no 
attempt  to  answer,  knowing  well  that  the 
silence  would  lift  me  out  of  all  difficulty. 
Suddenly  there  arose  before  me  two  angels. 
They  had  progressed  far  beyond  me,  and  had 
come  back  with  the  golden  shimmer  of  godly 
heritage.  One  bore  a  lamb,  the  other  was 
fondling  the  shaggy  mane  of  a  ferocious  lion. 
Now,  said  I,  comes  my  answer.  I  dared  not 
move,  lest  the  pictured  words  would  vanish. 
There  was  a  hand  laid  upon  my  head,  and  a 
voice  whispered  in  my  ear,  ' '  Tell  General 
Wool,  that  God's  object  in  human  life,  is 
love,  and  my  lion  would  in  no  way  devour  my 
neighbor's  lamb;  for  power  united  with  love 
is  God's  own  weapon  of  deal."  My  angel 
visitants  vanished,  and  I  said  to  General 
Wool,  "We  have  been  entertaining  angels 
unawares";  and  now  I  comprehend  the  blend- 
ing powers  of  Deity,  and  comprehend  God's 
object  and  aim  in  the  constitution  of  man, 
that  love  may  be  three-fold :  first,  embryotic 
condition;  second,  wisdom  of  understanding; 
and  third  and  last,  union  of  forces,  by  the 
hand  of  Divine  benediction;  and  the  compact 
thus  united  forms  principle,  which  is  God. 
We  may  call  God  selfish,  with  truth,  for  the 


136  BACKWARD   GLIMPSES. 

background  of  the  assertion  for  everything 
is  taken  to  his  great  heart  of  comfort;  nothing 
is  left  unprotected,  although  we  may  some- 
times think  that  Satan  has  won  the  advan- 
tage in  some  localities  and  with  some  people. 
Still  there  is  a  treasured  corner  in  every  field 
of  living  principle,  and  in  every  human  heart, 
where  the  dragon  of  evil  can  never  find  an 
entrance,  for  that  is  God's  parlor  where  every 
thing  choice  has  been  laid  away,  and  is  only 
opened  when  the  good  messenger  .raps  for 
admittance.  My  present  condition  of  exter- 
nal bearing,  could  not  become  tangible  to 
the  earthly  condition  of  external  sight.  We 
are  in  every  degree  of  life  suited  to  the  atmos- 
phere surrounding  us.  I  am  en  rapport  with 
my  medium,  consequently  I  am  in  her  atmos- 
phere, but  only  tangible  to  her  mentality,  or 
spiritual  sense  of  sight.  I  never  go  alone  to 
earth;  the  atmosphere  is  filled  with  circles  of 
intelligences,  going  and  coming,  and  like 
unto  the  pilgrimage  to  Mecca,  where  each 
soul  is  striving  to  carry  or  bring  tithes  mete 
for  repentance. 

To  say  that  we  walk,  in  spirit  life,  would 
be  a  misnomer,  since  our  feet  only  serve  in 
the  propelling  motion  that  wafts  our  body  to 
the  tune  of  our  will.  All  motion  is  depend- 


BACKWARD  GLIMPSES.  137 

enton  will.  The  motion  of  the  waving  grass, 
and  the  undulating  play  of  the  forest  trees, 
are  whispered  to  prove  the  almost  imper- 
ceptible will  of  atmospheric  pressure.  We 
float,  we  dance,  we  play,  we  always  possess 
the  buoyancy  of  youth,  T^ecau^e  spirit  is 
elasticity;  the  floating  aroma  that  pins  its 
star  of  truth  in  all  the  worlds  of  ether  blue. 
My  robes  of  protection  are  simple  and  un- 
pretending.- To  earth  they  would  seem  gos- 
samer-like and  shadowy,  but  to  my  spiritual 
condition  and  locality,  perfectly  tangible,  and 
true  to  service.  We  manufacture  fabrics  for 
all  wearing  purposes.  Ideality  has  here,  room 
to  expand,  and  nothing  can  exceed  in  beauty 
the  design  and  finish  of  some  articles  of 
spirit  apparel.  I  have  seen  here  a  web  of 
cloth  drawn  out  to  yards  and  yards  of  such 
fine  and  glowing  texture,  that  the  eye  could 
never  weary  in  admiration  of  its  beauty.  The 
sunset  dye  of  the  deepening  reddish  hue  is 
here  a  favorite  color  for  a  mantle  of  protec- 
tion, and  its  significance  is  strength,  and 
glory  of  achievement.  I  often  visit  earth  in 
my  sunset  gown  of  dashing  brightness;  it 
seems  to  buoy  me  up  in  fervor,  to  act  from 
a  standpoint  of  brilliant  motive  power.  I 
think  the  shading  of  our  robes  affect  our 


138  BACKWARD  GLIMPSES. 

lives  more  than  we  think  for;  bright  colors 
are  truly  essential  to  some  people;  they  lend 
a  keenness  and  charm  to  life.  We  should 
ever  robe  ourselves  to  suit  our  own  ideality,  for 
in  pleasing  ourselves  we  are  in  a  better  con- 
dition to  please  others.  If  a  brilliant  cos- 
tume suit  our  .physical  development  of  man- 
hood or  womanhood,  and  suit  our  fancy  fires 
of  display,  let  us  please  our  fancy  when  no 
harm  can  come  to  the  physical  by  so  doing. 
Sombre  shades  are  apt  to  be  in  keeping  with 
sombre  dispositions.  We  always  fraternize 
or  harmonize  the  outward  condition  of  robe- 
ment  with  the  interior  shapings  of  mind. 
Goethe  found  somewhere  in  study  or  travel, 
I  suppose  the  terms  are  synonymous  and 
agree  in  object,  found  that  colors  shape  our 
destiny.  That  may  seem  strange,  but  the 
strangeness  lies  in  our  noncomprehension  of 
chemical  effluvia,  steering  our  ship's  crew  of 
action.  Has  it  ever  been  definitely  under- 
stood why  sailors  dress  almost  uniformly  in 
blue?  Because  in  any  other  color  harmony 
would  be  incomplete.  The  blue  arch  of 
heaven,  the  rolling  sea  that  presents  its  blue 
flecked  face  give  to  the  mariner  a  sense  of 
oneness  with  heaven  and  sea.  God's  glory 
lies  in  the  chief  art  of  blending  to  perfect- 


BACKWARD   GLIMPSES.  139 

ness.  Color  is  as  essential  to  God  as  man, 
and  man  as  God.  It  has  never  yet  been  de- 
termined the  analysis  of  color,  its  formative 
principles,  and  how  deduced  from  the  world 
of  natural  keep-sakes,  to  enter  into  all  the 
life-work  of  man.  The  best  artists  that  the 
world  has  ever  recognized,  and  adopted  as 
standard  models  of  power  and  influence, 
have  been  the  workers  who  have  best  blended 
colors,  and  found  the  exact  line  of  mingling 
merit;  and  in  that  one  idea  lies  all  the  ex- 
pression and  beauty  in  pictured  scenery,  and 
in  the  facial  illustrations  of  individual  char- 
acters. I  often  visit  the  picture  rooms  and 
galleries  of  art  on  earth,  and  in  more  advanced 
localities  of  human  effort  and  workmanship, 
and  I  find  art  fast  progressing  to  nature;  find 
that  human  effort  is  fast  approaching  to  godly 
effort ;  and  so  in  all  the  branches  of  mind  glean- 
ings. Progress  is  the  watchword  calling  to 
duty.  God's  angel  world  is  alive  to  the 
sounding  term  that  bids  all  things  follow  in 
the  godly  wake  of  growth. 


CHAPTER  XXIV. 

tBIENDSHIP  implies  interest  in  anothers 
welfare,  and  a  willingness  to  make  a 
sacrifice  for  that  person's  good.  Sacri- 
fice, is  the  border  land  of  love.  I  may  talk 
love  by  the  hour,  and  look  love  in  the  face 
smirkingly  and  shyly,  but  if  I  have  never  given 
of  the  gifts  I  have  most  treasured —  then  love 
has  never  opened  the  door  of  my  heart;  never 
left  its  rich  cadences  of  musical  suffocation 
along  my  soul-land  of  reciprocity.  Love 
carries  us  away  from  self,  to  breast  the  diffi- 
culties besetting  the  path  way  of  the  loved  one. 
The  eagle  builds  its  nest  in  the  mountain 
eyrie,  that  no  harm  may  come  to  its  family 
nest  of  young,  and  no  prey  that  the  mother 
eagle  can  secure,  is  held  too  sacred  for  her 
devouring  love  for  her  offspring. 

The  eagles  power  to  love  is  grand, 
Is  bold  in  flight,  is  deep  in  skill, 
And  naught  can  break  its  will  of  strife 
To  well  prolong  its  loved  one's  life. 
Or  stop  the  current  of  its  power 
Where  love  is  guardian  of  the  hour. 


BACKWARD   GLIMPSES.  141 

God's  love  strokes  of  deep  laid  power  and 
skill.  The  children  of  time  can  but  little 
realize,  but  when  the  great  Arcana  of  natural 
law  is  unfolded,  then  may  we  understand 
something  of  our  God  of  love ;  something  of  the 
first  principles  that  bespoke  the  God-Head  of 
past  and  even  present  mythological  keepsakes. 
The  grandeur  of  Godly  conception  will  ever  be 
in  advance  of  the  mindality  of  man  ;  there  will 
always  be  a  spiral  point  called  God,  and  man 
will  be  the  satellites  of  moving  cosmopolitan 
power  and  will  of  daring.  I  always  expect  to  be 
John  Bunyan,  because  I  have  always  been  John 
Bunyan  since  God's  forces  shaped  my  individ- 
uality, and  that  is  to  remain,  for  there  is  prin- 
ciple underlying  every  part  and  parcel  of 
my  structure.  The  principles  that  formed 
me  could  not  form  another  like  me ;  and  why ! 
because  the  conditions  under  which  I  was 
constituted  an  individual  power  of  consequent 
manhood,  would  never  be  the  same  again, 
and  hence  the  variety  in  physiognomy  and 
character  in  the  same  household  of  children. 
I  never  expect  to  be  God,  never  expect  to  be 
Christ  even,  but  shall  expand  to  whatever 
God's  call  of  natural  abilities  leads  me  out 
to.  Old  Homer  was  claimed  by  many  cities 
of  power,  and  Christ's  birth  place  has  been 


OF  THE 

UNIVERSITY 


142  BACKWARD   GLIMPSES. 

under  the  lash  of  disputation  ;  simply  because 
he  was  Christ  carrying  the  key  to  all  the  vir- 
tues, therefore  many  places  would  liked  to 
have  claimed  His  birth  and  consequent  growth, 
but  there  is  no  law-place  or  time  to  chain 
growth  unless  we  chain  God,  the  propelling 
engineer,  working  the  great  lever  of  univer- 
sal law.  Theodore  Parker  has  stated  that  man 
travels  to  God,  in  the  direct  line  of  natural  re- 
search, and  is  expanded  to  the  mind,  forma- 
tive principles  of  God;  that  is  sound  reason- 
ing for  the  great  hero  of  liberal  thought  and 
as  Theodore  Parker  ever  reasoned  from 
cause  to  effect,  we  may  with  truth  expect  he 
will  find  the  end  of  his  chain,  if  end  there  be, 
and  if  its  staple  ring  be  enclosed  in  God's 
great  caldron  of  circular  beneficent  purpose, 
then  will  Theodore  Parker  become  a  lesser 
God,  to  work  out  the  established  principles 
of  the  greater.  Oh,  man !  why  doubt  of  your 
ultimate  success  over  death  ;  why  doubt  that 
the  destroying  angel  is  one  of  mercy,  and  that 
God's  face  of  love  is  the  silver  lining  that 
beams  through  every  clouded  atmosphere  of 
life.  I  thank  God  for  this  great  boon  of  hap- 
piness I  now  enjoy,  and  for  the  promised  con- 
tinuance which  I  witness  in  the  flower  gar- 
den, and  ivy  covered  rocks  of  standard  prin- 


BACKWARD   GLIMPSES.  143 

ciple,  that  meet  me  at  every  turn  my  wonder- 
ing footsteps  lead  the  way.  I  am  no  longer 
a  pilgrim  burdened  with  a  load  of  disappoint- 
ments and  sorrows,  trying  to  reach  the  celes- 
tial city  of  God's  love  and  mercy,  but  I  am 
stranded  on  the  shore  of  Faith,  Hope  and 
Charity,  and  am  a  pilgrim  traveling  at  the 
call  of  these  three  angel  monitions  of  power- 
ful appeal.  God  never  finds  me  idle,  there 
is  always  something  for  John  Bunyan  to  do, 
always  some  corner  in  which  to  rear  a  school 
for  the  protection  and  elevation  of  the  human 
mind  divine.  There  is  here  no  St.  Peter's  or 
St.  Paul's  church,  no  church  of  the  Trinity, 
or  Grace  Church  of  sanctified  towering  mo- 
nopoly, but  here  the  Church  is  freedom,  and 
God  the  minister  at  large,  that  drops  a  text 
from  the  waving  mind  of  deocratic  adjunct 
of  symbolic  representation.  God's  flower 
garden  is  nature's  field,  and  art  can  never  cause 
a  life,  beat  to  a  single  flower  or  a  stem  of  wav- 
in  green,  that  makes  landscape  yiews  of  regal 
beauty  ;  but  God  is  as  glorious  in  art  as  in 
nature,  for  both  art  and  nature  are  soul  mon- 
archs  of  the  principles  on  which  their  work 
is  based.  The  locality  which  •!  now  inhabit, 
is  literally  filled,  so  to  speak,  with  gems  of 
art;  the  sculptor  has  here,  seemingly  perfected 


144  BACKWAKD   GLIMPSES. 

his  art  of  white  capped  grandeur,  and  here 
are  representations  of  manhood  and  woman- 
hood, that  seem  to  be  asking  for  the  breath 
of  life,  to  start  away  from  the  dread  silence 
surrounding  them.  There  is  soon  to  be 
dropped  to  earth  another  branch  of  educa- 
tional knowledge,  and  its  diffusive  system 
must  expel  ignorance,  and  make  broad  -base 
over  the  theocratic  principles  of  past  genera- 
tions. The  idiosyncracies  that  have  found 
attachment  to  religion,  or  would  be  religion, 
have  been  of  man  making  and  fixing.  God 
has  never  said,  "  pay  to  any  minister  of  the 
gospel  $10,000  a  year  for  preaching".  Christ 
Jesus  God  would  sooner  say,  if  he  could 
make  a  verbal  communication,  give  to  the 
poor  in  your  midst,  $10, 000  a  year,  and  there- 
by practice  Christ  Jesus;  and  again  is  it  God's 
command  that  the  face  of  earth  is  here  and 
there  dotted  with  costly  churches,  that  reach 
their  spiral  points  heavenward,  while  the  face 
of  earth  is  here  and  there  dotted  with  travel- 
ing vagabonds  and  outcasts,  that  reach  no 
spiral  point  heavenward;  and  why?  because 
frail  human  nature  has  had  no  standard  beams 
of  support.  The  church  can  boast  of  its 
plentiful  means  to  make  a  show  and  faster 
the  pride  of  man  in  dead  symbols,  but  where 


BACKWARD   GLIMPSES.  145 

is  the  friendship,  love,  and  pride  that  can 
give  to  the  newly  outstainps  of  Godly  prin- 
ciple, that  flood  the  cities  of  the  world  to-day, 
without  a  grimace  of  discontent  and  a  wish 
that  God's  poor,  were  more  genteel  and  less 
beggarly.  God  never  says,  "let  your  sab- 
bath day  service,  be  the  dry  husks  and  dead 
pottage  gathered  from  the  olden  rookery  of 
ancient  theology, "  and  labeled,  ' '  Holy  Bible, " 
because  God  to-day,  does  not  fashion  mind  to 
be  as  receptive  from  that  olden  book  of  fables, 
as  from  the  newer  source  springs  of  interest 
and  truth,  and  labeled,  "God's  progressive 
Era.  *'  The  church  has  spent  its  fury  of  truth, 
the  road  leading  backwards  is  becoming 
bridged  up,  and  a  newer  passage  gained  by 
the  solvient  light  of  reason,  is  carrying  the 
nineteenth  century  away  from  the  bottomless 
pit  of  despair,  away  from  God's  holy  wrath, 
and  away  from  the  devil's  field  of  glory.  The 
new  Jerusalem  is  lying  all  about  us.  We  do 
not  have  to  change  our  condition,  our  local- 
ity or  our  creed,  to  find  the  work  that  fits  us 
for  happiness,  and  fits  us  for  God.  The  work 
is  here,  is  everywhere,  that  shall  make  us  ef- 
ficient apostles  to  grace  the  pages  of  modern 
theology.  Let  forms  and  ceremonies  be  the 
background  scenery,  and  deeds  make  the  pic- 

(7) 


146  BACKWARD   GLIMPSES. 

ture  of  lasting  virtue,  to  be  hung  before  the 
world  of  want.  My  backward  course  of  study 
has  been  what  fate  brought  in  my  way;  I  have 
never  turned  the  crank  to  my  own  movements, 
I  do  not  mean  by  that,  I  am  not  an  individu- 
al capable  of  will  forces  of  activity,  but  I 
mean  this  ;  that  there  is  ever  a  higher  arm  of 
law,  guiding  our  life-beats  of  purpose.  We 
are  inside  the  wheel  of  locomotive  evolution, 
and  turn  or  move  as  God's  purpose  attaches 
to  our  need.  Fate  is  a  stern  boy,  that  often 
presents  a  smiling  exterior  to  coy  us  into  the 
channel  best  adapted  to  the  individualization 
of  character. 

Some  minds  need  the  rough  and  trouble  of  life 
to  make  a  foothold  whereon  to  rest  our  ac- 
countability. Self-reliance  is  a  staff  that 
every  person  should  carry,  and  some  gain  it 
through  the  fiery  furnace  of  a  troubled  career 
in  life,  while  others  may  always  travel  the 
rosy  walks,  and  be  lulled  to  forgetfulness 
beside  the  silver  stream  of  content,  and  still 
manifest  a  self  poise  of  power  and  strength, 
to  battle,  if  occasion  requires,  with  the  ad- 
verse minds  that  sweep  along  the  course  of 
life's  battle  ground.  Every  person  should 
have  a  pride  of  character  to  maintain,  a  self- 
reliant  spirit  to  meet  the  difficulties  and  dis- 


BACKWARD   GLIMPSES.  147 

appointments  that  will  ever  surround  tlie  pur- 
posed work  of  man.  The  prevailing  spirit 
to-day,  in  the  world  of  earth,  is  inefficiency — 
a  dropping  to  a  seat  of  ease  and  the  desire  to 
lay  the  burdens  of  life  into  the  arms  or  on  to 
the  back  of  a  more  prosperous  power.  Some 
there  are  who  would  shuffle  off  all  responsi- 
bility, and  drop  into  the  indolent  chair  of  re- 
pose, and  fold  their  hands  over  life's  burdens 
with  the  self  complacency  of  a  perfect  hum- 
bug ,  and  I  would  say  to  such,  that  the  day 
of  reckoning  is  surely  awaiting  them  ;  for, 
every  talent  sprouted  must  grow  ;  and  if  there 
are  any  that  think  that  with  the  cessation  of 
earth,  life  ceases  responsibility,  let  them  way- 
lay the  error  at  once;  for,  it  is  a  mighty  mis- 
take, and  one  that  will  do  untold  mischief. 
The  harbinger  of  health  and  peace  is  in  this 
new  dispensation,  and  we  may  look  for  a 
waking  up  of  all  the  dormant  faculties,  and 
look  for  more  self-reliant  spirits  to  enter  the 
portals  of  spirit  life.  George  Washington 
told  me,  not  long  since,  that  life  had  only 
seemingly  commenced  with  him  ;  for,  said 
he,  ' '  So  much  of  my  time  passed  in  the  un- 
conscious atmosphere  of  disability,  I  could 
not  see  God's  pledge  mark  of  the  future 
handling  of  events.  I  could  only  do  my  duty 


148  BACKWARD   GLIMPSES. 

as  it  stepped  before  me  ;"  to  be  sure,  said 
he,  "  I  laid  a  fundament  every  day  in  regard 
to  the  future,  hoping  and  trusting  that  my 
platform  was  solid  ground  ;  but  the  knowl- 
edge direct  that  I  was  sure  of  life  and  its  ac- 
tive details  of  interest  forever  on  was  witheld 
from  me,  until  I  had  passed  the  rubicon  of 
selfish  desire;"  and  now,  said  he,  I  am  living, 
I  am  blessed  with  a  staple  fund  of  beautiful 
prospects,  and  life  presents  the  sheeny  hue  of 
a  broad  and  glowing  purpose."  I  wonder  if 
the  Church  to-day  could  recognize  any  beauty 
in  the  life  of  Thomas  Paine,  and  what  was  it, 
and  is  it  now,  that  made  and  makes  the 
man  so  unpopular.  It  was,  and  is,  ignorance, 
for  Thomas  Paine  never  did  a  mean  act  in 
his  life  ;  he  was  ever  true  to  the  honest  con- 
victions of  his  reason  ;  he  laid  before  the 
world  the  whys  and  wherefores  of  his  not  be- 
lieving the  Bible  to  be  a  verbal  command 
from  God  ;  and  Thomas  Paine  was  as  true  in 
his  reasoning  as  he  could  be  in  that  age  of 
advancement.  People  to-day  can  look  in  his 
age  of  reason  without  the  galvanic  shock  of 
horror  that  used  to  be  felt  in  the  fingers  and 
toes  of  the  would  be  religious  world.  Thomas 
Paine,  in  the  lighthouse  of  spiritual  advance- 
ment, sees  the  sheaves  of  truth  in  the  Bible 


BACKWARD   GLIMPSES.  149 

array  of  witchery  and  enthusiasm,  that  caught 
the  inspiration  it  could  best  digest,  and  hold 
before  the  world  in  the  symbolical  assump- 
tion of  Godly  merit. 

Truth  will  stand  ;  whether  found  in  the 
Bible,  the  Koran,  or  the  fabled  story  of 
1  'Jack  the  Giant  Killer;"  for  truth  is  the  pure 
grain  called  for  the  harrowed  ground  of  the 
next  generation. 


CHAPTER  XXV. 

|T  seems  by  some  hook  and  crook  of  Godly 
purpose  or  manly  purpose,  that  the 
iff?  world  is  becoming  topsy  turvy.  People 
are  drifting  to  the  shores  of  a  reasonable 
light  ;  and  the  olden  hue  of  anarchy  and  op- 
pression over  the  thinking  part  of  man's 
nature,  is  becoming  more  shaded  with  the 
bright  colors  of  lasting  virtue. 

A  person  to-day  can  say,  I  do  not  believe 
thus,  and  so,  without  being  termed  a  spy, 
sent  out  from  the  Courts  of  Deviltry.  I  honor 
the  person,  who,  after  a  careful  scrutiny  and 
investigation  of  a  subject,  can  come  out  with 
true  manly  or  womanly  courage,  as  the  case 
may  be,  and  say,  "  I  do  not  believe  thus  and 
so  ;  or,  I  do  believe,  because  my  reason 
approves  or  disapproves  ;  and  I  cannot  help 
my  opinion  formed."  We  may  look  in  that 
person's  soul  for  honor,  and  integrity  of 
motive.  Charles  Lamb  possessed  great  ver- 
satility of  thought ;  and  when  a  truth  was  made 
manifest  to  him,  he  acknowledged  its  power 


BACKWARD   GLIMPSES.  151 

over  his  soul.  Why  do  people  shrink  from 
the  acknowledgement  of  truth  ?  Why  bind 
the  unction  of  error  around  the  heart  pur- 
poses of  life,  and  create  stormy  seas  where 
it  might  be  fair  sailing.  I  know  of  no  sorrow 
so  great  as  a  continual  dodging  of  truth  ;  a 
desire  to  slip  the  noose  of  accountability ; 
and  in  order  to  do  that,  people  many  times  will 
make  themselves  out  to  be  nobodies ;  with 
the  thought  perfectly  unfledged  and  in  the 
pin  feather  of  discontent  ;  because,  in  failing 
to  acknowledge  truth  we  fail  to  grow  right- 
fully, and  are  completely  muddled  over  our 
bone  of  error.  There  is  a  right  way  and  a 
wrong  way  in  life,  and  both  are  perfectly 
tangible  to  reason,  when  reason  is  allowed  a 
seat  at  our  hearth  stone  of  honest  deal.  He 
who  abides  by  a  wrong,  reaps  wrong  culture  ; 
and  where  thistles  are  imbedded,  the  sweet 
anemone  or  shaded  faced  pink  cannot  grow 
in  luxuriant  freedom.  Therefore,  Oh,  man  and 
woman,  sow  the  seeds  that  will  sprout  virtues 
and  the  harvest  will  be  peace.  The  children 
of  life's  Abbey  are  growing  in  power,  and  the 
base  condition  of  that  power  will  be  the  free 
unity  of  heart  and  mind,  to  grapple  with  the 
spirit  of  progress  that  is  in  all  the  atmos- 
phere about  us  ;  and  from  every  tone  sent  out 
from  the  great  organ  of  God's  love. 


152  BACKWARD  GLIMPSES. 

The  age  of  mystery  is  breaking  to  the  com- 
prehensive spirit  of  man,  and  no  dismal  bird 
of  prey  will  croak  around  the  pool  of  infidel- 
ity. Christ's  second  coming  is  drawing  all 
to  the  righiful  stream  of  salvation,  and  there 
need  never  be  any  more  Jonah's  in  the 
whale's  belly  of  ignorance  ;  for  man  has 
learned  that  one  generation  plants  the  ani- 
malcule or  molecular  particles  on  which  the 
next  stage  of  life  rears  succesf ul  tabernacles  of 
strength.  The  ministry,  by  force  of  outside 
agreement,  is  dropping  its  spirit  of  control, 
and  the  free  thinkers  are  giving  out  an  element 
that  buoys  up  the  soul;  and  life  is  felt  to  be 
a  power  within  itself.  God  has  a  work  for 
every  heart  beat  of  individuality;  and  the 
frail  ones  of  earth  often  do  a  service  for  God 
and  humanity,  that  a  stronger  power  could 
not  accomplish.  It  takes  the  weak  ever  to 
confound  the  wise,  and  that  is  so  from  a  force 
of  natural  law,  for  weakness  is  negative  con- 
dition, and  positive  force  controls  and  sub- 
jects the  springs  that  can  convey  intelligence. 
The  law  that  governs  the  minutia  of  elemen- 
tary activity,  is  the  force  law  of  prepondera- 
ting particles  of  superior  strength.  The 
mother  governs  the  child,  because  superior 
weight  and  measure  and  superior  will  func- 


BACKWARD   GLIMPSES.  153 

tions,  create  the  subjective  spirit  in  the 
child.  Is  it  not  God's  immensity  that  fills  us 
with  awe  and  solemnity,  more  than  it  is  God's 
love.  There  is  a  spirit  in  humanity  that  re- 
spects and  caters  to  strength,  when  weakness 
might  pass  along  unheeded,  or  excite  the 
heart  to  pity,  or  it  might  be  a  contemptuous 
feeling  would  pass  the  portals  of  our 
judgment.  We  are  born  to  sorrow,  and  the 
pleasures  are  thrown  in  to  fill  up  the  meas- 
ure of  experience  and  discontent.  We  are 
never  so  happy  as  when  we  think  we  might 
be,  because  imagination  is  ever  exagerative, 
always  borrowing,  but  never  giving  back  the 
full  amount.  Life  is  a  school  of  rehearsal ; 
and  the  play  is  only  perfected  when  the  drop 
curtain  is  lifted  to  our  advantage  on  the 
shores  of  the  immortal  life.  Pearls  have 
great  significance  in  the  spirit  world ;  they  are 
the  embossment  to  a  pure  and  holy  life.  We 
can  only  call  around  us  the  emblems  that  cor- 
respond or  affinitize  with  our  social  and  re- 
ligious natures.  Peace  never  attracts  turmoil, 
the  two  elements  conflict ;  and  a  free  passage 
is  sought  by  one  or  both  of  the  opposing 
parties.  There  must  be  a  modicum  of  con- 
geniality that  attracts  any  two  forces  of 
superior  or  inferior  strength.  There  must 


154  BACKWARD   GLIMPSES. 

be  a  mingling  of  the  magnetic  currents  to 
produce  an  equilibrium  in  the  affectional 
caskets  of  power.  We  are  never  so  strong  as 
when  drawn  to  the  right  element  of  mag- 
netic attraction  ;  because  then  we  have  met 
our  equilibrium,  and  our  weakened  forces 
have  gained  strength,  and  also  imparted  the 
vitalizing  movement  in  the  opposite  condition 
of  life.  Truth  is  ever  stronger  than  fiction, 
and  when  the  harmonial  law  is  fully  and 
perfectly  developed  and  understood  there  will 
be  no  impurity  attached  to  the  mingling  of 
the  sexes.  We  are  coming  out  to  the  light 
where  we  must  give  heed  to  our  needs,  where 
we  must  endeavor  to  grow  scientifically,  and 
therein  grow  truthfully.  No  person  can 
know  the  needs  or  requirements  of  another 
person,  and,  moreover  they  never  can  know; 
for  every  person  has  an  especial  house  to 
keep,  and  it  is  well  understood  that  no  two 
buildings  of  time's  pleasure  of  destruction 
are  swept  and  garnished  alike,  or  with  the 
same  implements  of  use,  therefore,  we  may 
infer  that  each  individual  casket  must  find  its 
own  means  of  growth  and  purification. 

Hamlin  the  great  organ  builder,  associated 
everything  with  sound  ;  nothing  so  beautiful 
to  him  as  music,  and  he  seemed  to  think  that 


BACKWAKD   GLIMPSES.  155 

if  a  person  had  not  music  in  their  soul,  they 
were  almost  devoid  of  interest,  and  the  whole 
world  seem  to  have  taken  Hamlin's  platform, 
and  pass  condemnation  on  the  private  and 
public  lives  of  each  other  ;  that  spirit  is  all 
wrong,  t  and  grows  from  the  noncomprehen- 
tion  of  the  natural  laws  that  control  our  drift- 
ings  to  each  other.  We  are  in  God's  orbit  of 
love,  and  we  must  all  partake  of  the  quantity 
and  quality,  that  is  the  best  adapted  to  our 
mental  and  physical  structures  of  reception. 
1 '  Whom  the  God's  love  die  young, "  is  a 
quotation  or  translation  from  the  old  Hebrewic 
canticles  of  mythological  keepsakes;  but  I 
should  say  in  these  later  days,  that  whom  the 
God's  love  and  propel  out  to  do  a  service  for 
the  world  at  large,  are  misunderstood  and 
sorely  afflicted,  and  beset  by  doubts,  from 
the  same  public  they  are  giving  their  life  en- 
ergies to  make  happier  ;  all  persons  have  the 
right  to  a  legitimate  pursuit  of  happiness  ; 
but  all  persons  are  not  allowed  its  pursuance 
in  the  most  harmonious  channel,  and  are  often 
circumvented  by  powers  or  circumstances 
beyond  their  control.  What  might  have  been 
we  have  no  business  to  meddle  with,  because 
there  is  no  shadow  of  hope  resting  around 
that  ideal  fountain  of  little  worth  we  must  call 


156  BACKWARD   GLIMPSES. 

our  benefits,  from  the  works  before  us,  and 
trudge  along  with  our  packs  empty  or  filled, 
as  we  have  been  diligent  in  our  dutious  search. 
Christian's  pack  or  burden  has-been  strapped 
to  the  back  and  felt  around  the  heart  of  many 
a  monarch  soul,  traveling  the  stubborn  road 
of  life  ;  and  God's  mansion  house  of  love 
seems  afar  off,  but  there  is  ever  some  point  to 
be  gained,  some  halting  place  where  we  stop 
and  count  the  cost  of  our  journey,  and  try 
and  realize  what  we  have  gained  from 
what  we  have  expended.  It  is  oftentimes 
well  and  consistent  with  reason,  to  count 
the  cost  before  we  make  a  purchase  in 
the  moral,  intellectual  or  physical  field  of 
action,  and  then  again  some  people  meet  with 
better  results  by  stepping  out  to  meet  what 
may  come,  trusting  in  the  good  genie  of  fate 
to  make  smooth  the  unattempted  future  even 
in  thought.  What  I  most  wish  to  impress 
upon  the  minds  of  all  thinking  people,  is  the 
necessity  of  instituting  a  self-governing  or 
regulating  spiral  rule  of  action.  Let  us  take 
the  platform  that  we  are  ascending,  mono- 
cules  capable  of  great  expansion  and  growth, 
capable  of  joining  hands  with  God,  and  min- 
gling our  forces  of  accumulation  in  the  great 
centripetal  foci  of  world  building.  God  is 


BACKWARD  GLIMPSES.  157 

mundane  as  well  as  spiritual,  and  as  we  are 
prototypes  of  the  first  seedling  fruit,  it  is  not 
assumption  but  a  pleas  urableiact,  that  we 
verge  towards  and  mingle  in  the  vestibule  of 
Godly  greatness.  My  Backward  Glimpses 
have  called  up  many  a  reminiscense  of  the 
past,  and  the  items  I  thought  would  best  suit 
and  be  of  advantage  to  the  world,  I  have 
gathered  together  in  book  form,  and  I  send 
it  forth,  hoping  the  refrain  will  be  glad  tid- 
ings of  great  joy,  and  hoping  that  earth  will 
receive  me,  although  I  come  dressed  in  the 
freedom  suit  that  somewhat  conflicts  with 
my  past  darkened  garb  of  earthly  apparel. 

God  grant  this  era  of  world  knowledge  may 
have  a  fundament  of  truth  whereon  to  rest 
the  growth  of  individuality,  and  whereon  to 
stand  firm  when  the  dashing  waves  of  priestly 
power  shall  seek  the  door-way  of  spirit  com- 
munion. My  friends  of  earthly  relationship, 
I  would  that  I  could  reach  you,  I  would  that 
I  could  speak  to  you  in  a  verbal  language, 
asking  you  to  come  higher,  that  God's  tem- 
ple is  filled  with  true  and  loving  friends,  only 
waiting  for  the  signal  that  shall  say,  I  am 
wanted.  Then,  Oh,  friends,  will  your  homes 
and  all  the  walks  of  life  be  strengthened,  and 
thereby  purified  by  the  knowledge  that  God 


158  BACKWARD   GLIMPSES. 

has  raised  us  up  to  become  a  help  to  Himself, 
has  clothed  us  with  every  attribute  of  Godly 
wearing,  and  has  stamped  us  that  we  may  be 
'ever  recognized  as  the  sheep  straying  to  the 
fold  of  Christly  love  and  merit.  So  there- 
fore, oh  world,  be  diligent  in  search,  and  be 
true  to  the  honest  convictions  that  surge 
through  your  soul  lives,  and  thus  may  we 
meet  the  smiling  face  of  God,  the  herald 
whole  ;  a  blessing  to  the  world  and  a  gift  of 
peace  and  fellowship,  while  we  all  journey 
towards  the  height  of  spiritual  unfoldment. 
I  will  give  a  short  poem  handed  to  me  by 
Elizabeth  Browning,  and  is  a  gem  in  the 
great  setting  house  of  truth. 


THE  WORLD'S    NEED. 


J«Y  ELIZABETH  BARRETT  BROWNING. 


A  fountain  plays  beside  my  door, 
And  dreamland  forest,  stretched  beyond, 
Which  makes  my  home  an  Eden  bovver, 
Filled  with  perfume  from  many  a  flower; 
And  here  I  live  and  call  for  time, 
The  sprays  of  truth  from  lands  divine. 

Here  am  I  seated,  this  bright  morn, 
With  flowing  raiment,  book  in  hand, 
And  asking  my  bright  muse  to  guide 
My  wandering  thoughts  to  timely  tide, 
And  open  wide  my  wisdom  cell, 
That  I  may  labor  long  and  well. 

I  asked  my  muse  what  earth  most  needs, 
And  sat  me  still,  to  await  reply, 
Well  knowing  that  my  angel  friend, 
Would  brightest  council  to  me  lend; 
And  give  me  what  at  present  time, 
The  world  would  to  degree  incline. 

Her  needs  are  many,  said  my  fiiend, 
And  we  are  gleaners  gone  before, 
Now  let  us  drop  our  staple  wheat, 
That  is  so  glorious  and  sweet, 
Beside  the  shriveled  grain  of  earth, 
And  thus  commence  a  better  birth . 


160  BACKWARD   GLIMPSES. 

The  world  is  filled  with  talents  fine, 

And  wisdom  sits  beside  her  springs; 

Bat  love  the  cupid  archer  sly, 

Has  evee  waited,  bye  and  bye, 

To  do  the  things  that's  now  required, 

For,  strange  to  say  the  creeds  seem  tired. 

Tired  of  chasing  errors  old, 
And  see  no  growth  i'rom  efforts  made, 
No  minds  expanding  hearts  made  pure, 
Their  stream  of  knowledge  is  secure, 
And  Christ  the  sufferer  still  at  large, 
Is  keeping  thought  and  sins  in  charge. 

Oh  !  world,  a  woman  weak  I  am, 

A  traveler  on  the  sunny  side, 

But  well  I  know  you  need  more  love, 

More  Noah's  arks  and  friendly  doves; 

To  rest  the  weary  tired  soul, 

And  carry  hope  to  hearts  grown  cold. 

What  can  I  give,  to  bless  and  save, 

Since  woman's  worth  is  scarcely  proved, 

And  little  heeded  in  the  strife, 

Of  principle  with  erring  life; 

But  well  I  know  another  need, 

Is  woman's  power  with  man's  to  lead? 

Another  force  to  counterplay, 
And  balance  even  justice'  scales, 
Which  have  too  long  weighed  to  the  full, 
The  power  that  could  the  money  pull; 
And  also  tax  to  pay  a  debt, 
What  justice  fails  to  represent. 


IVERSITY 


BACKWAKD   GLIMPSES. 

You  have  a  need,  Oh  world,  to  live, 
Upon  a  moral,  high-toned  plane, 
A  need  to  sprout  and  grow  the  seed, 
That  will  to  virtue  truly  lead; 
And  join  the  male  and  female  hand, 
In  loving  purpose,  noby  planned. 

Since  Adam  could  not  live  alone, 

Or  Eve  consent  to  idle  be, 

God  surely  had  some  broad  design 

In  seeking  thus  to  man  entwine; 

A  love  of  home  with  active  measures, 

To  consumate  his  highest  measures. 

Man  truly  needs  a  sovereign  balm, 

In  form  of  virtue,  peace,  and  hope, 

That  life  may  claim  its  rightful  due, 

And  not  be  cheated  by  a  few, 

Whose  monied  power  God  ne'er  defends, 

But  constant  seeks  the  rightful  ends. 


161 


Why  should  we  seek  to  crush  a  part 
Of  brothers,  sisters  to  us  given, 
To  make  earth  life  a  social  field, 
Where  hearts  may  oft  to  duty  yield 
And  never  seek  to  murder  love, 
The  Peace-king  from  the  Courts  above. 

Earth'little  heeds  her  starry  flag, 
The  banner  that  for  freedom  speaks, 
For  woman  is  the  voiceless  bird 
That  Congress  never  yet  has  heard, 
And  does  not  now  intend  to  give 
The  right  to  independence  live. 


162  BACKWAED  GLIMPSES. 

Oh!  God  we  scorn  this  fettered  yoke 
That  is  so  galling  and  so  base, 
That  hearts  of  womanhood  must  feel 
The  wrong  that's  done  in  manly  deal, 
And  ask  why  so  the  mother's  heart 
Should  feel  so  long  the  bitter  smart. 

Why  sisters  should  be  left  to  grope 
Along  a  path  with  darkness  laid, 
And  see  no  friendship  in  earth's  laws, 
No  interest  in  their  working  cause, 
No  friendly  voice  of  mercy  given 
When  they  with  virtue  long  have  striven. 

Great  God!  we  need  amendments  true, 

We  need  and  must  obtain  the  right 

To  work  in  union  side  by  side 

With  man  in  cause  of  country's  pride, 

And  to  secure  by  freedom's  letter, 

The  spirit  which  will  prove  much  better. 

We  need  a  dog  on  error's  track, 
A  huntsman  clad  to  breast  the  tide, 
Whose  armor  will  reflect  a  will 
To  say  old  wrongs  henceforth  be  still; 
Henceforth  let  virtue  lead  the  way, 
Let  justice  be  the  God  of  day. 

Let  man  and  woman,  God's  own  power, 
Join  heart  and  hand  for  equal  rights, 
Nor  seek  to  blast  each  others  name 
For  love  or  power  of  worldly  fame; 
For  our  true  errand  is  to  give 
A  rightful  purpose  while  we  live. 


BACKWARD   GLIMPSES.  163 

We  spirit  soldiers  passing  on, 
Do  often  step  to  earthly  homes 
And4feel  the  wrongs  in  social  ties, 
Feel  friendship  oft  her  name  belies, 
And  love,  the  king  and  queen  of  hearts 
Is  sadly  changed  in  all  its  parts. 

God  grant  that  rightful  powers  may  sway 
The  nation  in  her  present  need, 
And  all  the  gathered  force  of  mind 
Work  for  the  good  of  all  combined, 
And  then  can  God,  the  heroed  king, 
See  all  things  verging  to  his  ring. 

I  ask  of  earth  this  smallest  boon 

To  search  above  for  rays  of  light, 

Nor  bind  the  soul  to  worldly  gain, 

The  moth  that  doth  corrupt  the  brain, 

When  motives  sordid  and  apart, 

From  God's  own  field  the  common  mart. 

Fair  world  you  need  the  flower  divine, 
The  blossom  that  shall  never  fade, 
Sweeter  by  far  than  anemone 
Dipped  in  the  nectardew  of  home  , 
And  set  apart  for  favored  guest, 
And  bitter  sweet  for  all  the  rest. 

This  flower  is  love,  whose  sheeny  light 
Would  beautify  a  desert  wild, 
And  cause  the  human  heart  to  speak 
To  erring  ones,  both  kind  and  sweet 
That  true  repentance  may  be  gained 
And  all  hearts  by  one  God  reclaimed. 


164  BACKWARD   GLIMPSES. 

There  is  no  Heaven  apart  from  love, 
No  God  that  roams  Elysian  fields, 
Unless  the  smile  that  lights  his  face 
Is  meant  for  every  time  and  place, 
And  meant  at  last  to  reach  false  deal, 
And  to  all  sin  in  law  repeal. 

We  know  that  progress  mounts  the  stage 
Of  active  life's  dramatic  scenes, 
And  what  has  been  can  ne'er  return 
To  burn  its  incense  on  our  urn, 
For,  we  have  nothing  set  apart 
To  favor  working  in  the  dark. 

More  light  we  crave — more  light  we  ask — 
For  reason  never  more  can  sleep 
Beside  the  active  stream  of  life 
When  progress  is  the  God  of  strife, 
Whose  chariot  wheels  crush  mythic  art, 
The  darksome  badge  'round  God's  true  heart. 

The  world  needs  Christ  in  golden  sheen, 
A  spirit  bright  with  deeds  of  love, 
Enrapport  with  each  human  heart, 
And  in  all  general  terms  take  part, 
That  go  to  make  the  world  of  earth 
Fit  traveler  for  celestial  birth. 

Christ  has,  too  long,  stood  idly  by 
With  suction  forces  wrongly  laid, 
His  blood  has  served  to  soul  enthrall, 
And  cover  mind  with  darkness'  pall ; 
But,  in  this  nineteenth  century  bland, 
Christ  must  appear  with  spirit  hand. 


BACKWABD  GLIMPSES.  165 

Earth  needs  God's  arc  of  wisdom  true, 
To  beautify  and  bless  her  shores  ; 
Needs  moral  strength  and  courage  brave, 
To  chase  all  despots  to  their  grave  ; 
And  ne'er  give  heed  to  slavery's  call, 
Whose  voice  no  music  can  recall. 

Earth,  truly,  needs  her  spirit  springs 
Made  ready  for  the  contest  bold  ; 
For,  spirit  mind  and  voice,  at  last 
Will  blow  on  earth  one  long,  loud  blast ; 
And  its  refrain,  so  long  and  sweet 
Will,  nevermore,  find  mind  asleep. 

One  other  need  has  earth  to-day 

To  carry  on  her  work  of  love, 

Joint  stock  in  principle  and  hearts  all  strong, 

To  multiply  no  public  wrong, 

And  seek  to  make  the  public  poor 

A  gift  from  God,  to  us  secure. 

Let  not  our  souls  all  selfish  be  ; 
For,  naught  of  chattels  can  we  take 
But  deeds  of  love,  and  kindness  given 
Can  never  from  our  souls  be  riven  ; 
But  will  in  Heaven  find  ample  scope 
And  crown  our  brow  with  Christly  hope. 

One  need  has  earth,  I'd  quite  forgotten, 

To  make  her  ring  forever  heard. 

It  is  the  power  to  trace  and  feel 

The  needs  of  others,  when  they  kneel 

With  sorrowing  hearts  and  anguished  face 

Unto  God's  table  land  of  grace, 


166  BACKWARD   GLIMPSES. 

And  ask  of  mortal  man  to  give 
The  smallest  pittance  e'en  to  live. 
It  may  be  Mercy,  Pardon,  Gold 
That's  asked,  by  penitence  made  bold  ; 
What'er  it  be,  if  love's  extended, 
Our  peace  with  God  is  well  defended. 

ELIZABETH  B.  BROWNING. 


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